I LIBRARY. OF CONGRESS.! 
t , I ~~ 



I -«* i: | 

$ — f 

i UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. ! 



HEART-LIFE 



BY 



/ 



THEODORE L. CUYLER, 

PASTOR OP LAFAYETTE-AVE. CHURCH, BROOKLYN. 



\<\ 










AMEBICAN TEACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 



*t> Q& 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by the 
American Tract Society, in the Ohice of the Librarian of Congress 
at Washington. 




Heart-Keeping page 5 

Am I alive? 10 

Building on the Rock 16 

The "Rock of Ages" - 23 

Joining the Lord Jesus 30 

Wanted— More Calebs 35 

The Night-Bell of Prayer - - 43 

True Prayers never Lost 50 

Spiritual Dyspeptics - 57 

Lovable Christians 64 

Jesus, Lover of my Soul 70 

Sitting down with Jesus 78 

Christ Within 84 

Over the Line — 89 

A Shot at the Decanter •• 96 

A Teacher in God's School --- 104 

Hymns of the Cross - 110 

Morning Cloud Religion - — 11G 

The Reconverted Man 122 

The Spices in God's Garden 129 

Making the Iron Swim 137 

The Joy of Saving the Lost 144 

Hymns of Heaven 152 

A Total Eclipse 159 

Christ the Light to a Higher Life 165 

The Cost of Serving Christ 172 

Full Assurance 178 

Hymns of the Heart 185 



"With tlie following chapters on the Christian 
Life, there have been incorporated the fire pop- 
ular articles — from the N. T. Evangelist — on 
" The Gbeat Hymns of the Chbistian Chukch." 




HEART-LIFE 




Heart- Keeping, 

JEEP thy heart with all dili- 
gence ; for out of it are the issues 
of life." As good " housekeeping " 
is essential to domestic comfort, so 
good heart-keeping is essential to 
healthful and happy piety. 
The word of God represents the human 
heart as a dwelling. The unconverted heart 
is a habitation of the Evil one, with his brood 
of unholy thoughts and sinful tastes and pas- 
sions. When Jesus Christ first enters this 
dwelling-place of the Evil one, he finds it fear- 
fully filthy and out of order. The first work 



6 HEAKT-LIFE. 

of the Divine Spirit is to cleanse the house. 
Every room must be entered and purified. 
Into the stately and sumptuous drawing-room 
where Pride held court, the lowly Saviour en- 
ters and expels the occupant. From the walls 
of Sensuality's chamber many wanton pictures 
have to be taken down. The deserted and 
cobwebbed closet of Conscience is entered by 
the key of Truth, and is thrown open to the 
daylight. 

Memory is another apartment of the mind 
which the Holy Spirit renews for a higher and 
holier use. Ranged on its shelves he finds 
the stores which were brought in through the 
five doorways of the senses. Much of this 
accumulation is but rubbish. Christ does not 
destroy this faculty ; he simply makes it hence- 
forth a granary of truth. A sanctified mem- 
ory is the soul's store-room. We pity the man 
with whom this is but an empty garret or a 
confused lumber-room, heaped up with accu- 
mulated things, so hopelessly mingled that its 
owner can never lay hands on what he needs 
at the moment. With a devout believer the 
memory is a cabinet of curiosities of God's 



HEART-KEEPING. 7 

love. In no apartment does Jesus abide 
oftener than in this ; here the alabaster-box 
of gratitude is broken, and the room is filled 
with the sweet odor of the ointment. 

There is also a chamber of Taste, from whose 
window the lover of beauty looks out on mag- 
nificent landscapes ; and at midnight up into 
the star-studded vaults of Heaven. There is 
a lofty watch-tower where holy Vigilance keeps 
guard to espy the approaches of the enemy. 
Woe unto the Christian when the sentinel falls 
asleep on the tower ! Over the doorway to 
this turret the Spirit has written, " Watch unto 
prayer !" * Blessed is he whom his Lord 
when he cometli shall find watching." From 
this tower Faith often looks out through the 
spyglass of the promises, and catches bright 
glimpses of the celestial city which lies at the 
end of the way. 

"For glimpses such as these 
My willing soul will bear 
All that in darkest hours it sees 
Of toil and pain and care." 

We must not overlook one room in a con- 
verted heart, ' though it be ever so small or 



8 HEART-LIFE. 

ever so secluded. It is the secret "closet" 
where Faith holds sweet fellowship with God. 
It is fragrant with the presence of Jesus. Here 
stands the mercy-seat. To this inner sanctum 
Faith keeps a golden key inscribed, "Ask, and 
ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; pray 
without ceasing." Over the door she readeth 
the inviting words: "Enter into this closet, 
' and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to 
thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father 
which seeth in secret shall reward thee open- 
ly.' ' On the walls are inscriptions written in 
moments of devout intercourse with God, when 
the meditations of him were like the droppings 
of the honeycomb. 

This is Faith's stronghold; here she weap- 
ons herself for the daily conflict. Silence in 
that closet of prayer bespeaks death through- 
out all the house. "When that door is suffered 
to rust on its hinges and that chamber is de- 
serted, then the heart-house is soon retaken 
by Satan, and evil spirits come in and dwell 
there. 

To keep this house with all diligence is the 
primal duty of every one who bears the name 



HEART-KEEPING. 9 

of Christ. The object of this little volume is 
to offer a few counsels for the right keeping of 
the heart and the right conduct of the Chris- 
tian life. Some of these brief chapters have 
been written out of our own personal experi- 
ence; and some have been gathered during 
many years of observation of the experiences 
of others. How to keep Jesus in the inner 
heart, and how to glorify Jesus in the outer 
life, is the twofold secret of spiritual success 
and of final salvation. 



^Mm^& 



^/T^m 




yAM T ft 



LIVE 




T is not a sufficient answer to this 
question for any Christian to say, 
"I was once converted." Thousands 
were born ten years ago who are now 
in their coffins. There is a great dif- 
ference between being "made alive," and keep- 
ing alive afterwards. Quite too many profes- 
sors base their hope of being Christians, not 
on what they now are, but on some experience 
during a revival season in days gone by. 

Genuine conversion brings a man into a new 
state towards God. Old things have passed 
away; he is a new creature. But he must 
constantly encounter a strong under-current, 
running like a mill-race, towards the old state 
of corruption. No renewed heart will " keep 
sweet" without a great deal of salting with 



AM I ALIVE? 11 

divine grace. No converted man will stay con- 
verted unless he takes care of himself, and the 
Master takes care of him. "What is conver- 
sion ? It is the turning of the heart to God ; 
and unless that heart holds fast on God, and 
God holds fast to him, he will soon fall into 
vain confidence, apathy, pride, self-indulgence, 
or any sin that "doth so easily beset" him. 
How long do you think that Paul would have 
been Paul if the power of God had not kept 
him, through faith? "Not I," exclaims the 
modest old hero — "not I, but Christ that liveth 
in me." "I live by faith on the Son of God." 
Again he exclaims, " Sojight I, not as one that 
striketh out into the air ; but I keep my body 
under." He uses a phrase drawn from the 
boxer's contests, and the literal translation of 
it is, " I bruise my body — I give it a black eye — 
lest I myself should be a reprobate." Paul 
had such a terrible dread lest his evil propen- 
sities should get the better of him, that he 
constantly beats down with steady and sturdy 
blows the unruly appetites and passions. If 
such was the necessity laid upon the great 
apostle, who of us has a right to grow fool- 



12 HEART-LIFE. 

hardy and self-confident? The moment a 
Christian begins to feel, "What do I care? 
let others be afraid — not I;" the moment a 
Christian feels so, he is as near to a dis- 
graceful fall as boastful Peter was in Pilate's 
hall. 

But granting that you Were once made alive, 
kind reader, are you alive to-day ? If so, how 
shall you keep alive ? 

First of all comes prayer, the daily and hour- 
ly intercourse of the soul with God. Prayer is 
just as vital to my spiritual life as water is to 
the "monthly rose" whose leaves are now 
dripping from the refreshing of the pitcher. 
Prayer is the conduit-pipe between my soul 
and heaven. It is the o^let upwards for grat- 
itude, and yearning desires for blessings ; it is 
the Met through which the supplies of grace 
pour downward into the heart. "When the 
channel is allowed to freeze up, I am in the 
same condition with the housekeeper who in- 
quires, " I wonder why the water does not run 
to-day ? The plumber is sent for, and he soon 
explains the difficulty. " Your pipes are fro- 
zen up ; the connection with the reservoir is 



AM I ALIVE ? 13 

stopped." Alas for the Christian who has 
broken his connection with Christ ! 

Prayer may be also likened to a telegraph 
with Heaven. Our messages go up with the 
hghtning speed of thought. The mercies asked 
for often flow down to us with the promptness 
and velocity of a divine love, i Sometimes the 
blessing sought is ours at once. Sometimes 
the answer is delayed. Then we can only do 
our duty and wait. Sometimes the reply comes 
in the sudden shock of an unexpected trial; 
it comes like a death-message over the wires ! 
But it is all- right. God knows what answer 
to send. I must take what my Father chooses 
to give. If I put myself into connection with 
God, I am only responsible for this end of the 
celestial telegraph ; not for the end that lies in, 
the Infinite bosom of love. I must receive 
just what God sends. " Thy will be done." 
But trying messages are not so dreadful as to 
have the telegraph of prayer utterly out of 
order through long disuse, and the soul cut off 
from Jesus. Friend, is thy connection with 
the Dime Hearer and Giver broken off? 
Then to your knees ! to your knees ! 



14 HEART-LIFE. 

" Prayer is appointed to convey 

The blessings God designs to give: 
Long as they live should Christians pray, 
For only while they pray they live." 

But with prayer the Master also coupled 
watchfulness. "I say unto you all, -watch!" 
Never yet have I seen the Christian whose 
heart would not "bear watching." The over- 
sight must be close, constant, and wakeful. If 
you were set to keep a canary-bird on the 
open palm of your hand, you would under- 
stand what is meant by "keeping the heart 
with all diligence." Tou must not take off the 
spiritual eye for one instant. Have the arm of 
resolution ever ready to seize it the very first 
moment that it attempts to fly off into sin. 

"Wherefore I say unto you all, watch!" 
Watch the stealthy approaches of the tempter. 
Watch for old habits of sin that will steal 
back again though they have been driven off 
a hundred times "from the premises." Watch 
over your soul's nurseries in which the thoughts 
are cradled. Watch over an unruly tongue. 
Watch for opportunities to do good. Let the 
Mary side of your religion be ever at the feet 
of Jesus in humble devotion; let the Martha 



AM I ALIVE? 



15 



side of your piety be ever abounding in the 
work of the Lord. In these days we hear 
much about the "higher life." But the best 
prescription that we know of for attaining it 
is to use our knees for prayer, our eyes for 
watchfulness, our purses for liberal giving, our 
tongues for confessing Jesus, and both our 
hands in hard work to do Christ's will, and to 
pull sinners out of the everlasting fires. 






Building on the Rock, 

IG deep, and lay your foundation 
well, is our earnest advice to ev- 
ery awakened soul. Almost every 
revival brings into the cliurcli more 
or less of what may be called " sha- 
ky professors." Their religious life is frail, 
ill-built, tottering, and liable to come down in 
the first stiff gale of temptation. The simple 
reason is, that there was no underlying godli- 
ness based on Jesus Christ. When you see a 
huge crack in the third story room of a tall 
mansion, you may at once suppose that there 
is something wrong in thefoundation. So with 
a religious profession that is not bottomed on 
the Lord Jesus Christ. Sooner or later the 
crack appears in the daily life; or else the 
flimsy structure leans over from the perpen- 
dicular "like a bowing wall and a tottering 



BUILDING ON THE ROCK. 17 

fence." Even if it manage to hold itself up 
until the dying hour, the tremendous surge of 
death tumbles the whole edifice of presump- 
tion and falsehood into utter, irretrievable 
ruin. When the last storm descends, and the 
floods beat upon it, it falls; and "great will 
be the fall of it," for eternity can bring no 
repair of the wreck. 

Christ, in his searching Sermon on the 
Mount, spoke of two classes of builders. The 
one built on the sand, and the other built on 
the rock. When the hour of trial came upon 
both alike, the quicksand upset the one, and 
the rock-bed upheld the other. The one stood 
because it had s. foundation; the other fell for 
want of one. Now, just here is the vital point 
with every anxious seeker after salvation ; for 
it will be a terrible thing for you to find out 
at last that you have been building on the 
sand ! 

In building for eternity there is but one 
sure foundation. God is rich in resources, 
but he has provided only one plan of salva- 
tion. " Other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." What is 

9 



18 HEAKT-LIFE. 

meant by this? "We believe it means, that 
when sinful man had no righteousness of his 
own to stand upon, Christ "becomes to him 
righteousness." When he has no strength, 
Jesus offers to put his infinite arm beneath 
him. When the sinful soul has no inward 
principle to base a godly- life upon, Jesus im- 
plants one through regeneration. When he 
has no pattern to live by, Jesus furnishes a 
perfect model. And when any penitent man 
sincerely embraces Christ Jesus as his Saviour, 
rests on his atonement for pardon, looks to 
Jesus for guidance, leans on Jesus for support, 
and is united to Jesus in heart and in daily 
life, then may he be said to have built on Je- 
sus as his spiritual foundation. When a man 
thus embraces Christ, he has a rock-bed infinite 
and immovable beneath him. If you ask such 
a man why he expects to be saved, his simple 
answer is, " Christ died for me, and his blood 
cleanseth from all sin." If you ask him the 
ground of his assurance, he answers with Paul, 
" I Icnoiv whom I have believed." If you in- 
quire of him whence he derives strength for 
the strain of daily life, its wrenching trials, its 



BUILDING ON THE ROCK. 19 

wrestling temptations, and its toils, lie can 
humbly testify that down in the depths of his 
soul there is an underlying grace which Christ 
doth furnish. This work of Christ for him and 
within him is his foundation. It underlies his 
religion, just as the granite underlies the heav- 
en-kissing hills. If you take away the divine 
Jesus from this man, you take away his faith, 
his hope, his peace, his strength, his character, 
his all. 

Now, my friend, here is a Rock for your 
soul — the Rock of Ages. If you build on any- 
thing else — on your prayers or your profes- 
sions, on your morality or your philanthropy, 
on your ceremonies or your church-member- 
ship — you are building on the sand. Morality 
is a very beautiful part of a Christian's super- 
structure, but it is not a foundation. Other 
foundation, remember, no man can lay than 
that is laid, which is Christ Jesus. "We have 
seen some melancholy crashes in the moral 
career of men; we have heard some terrible 
falls in dying chambers. They were the down- 
tumblings of a false hope that w r as bottomed 
on the sand. When the floods came and the 



20 HEART-LIFE. 

winds smote on it, it fell, and great was tlie 
fall thereof! 

But wlien a penitent soul lias committed 
itself to Jesus, «and tlie new heart, the new 
principle, and the new purpose have come to 
it through conversion, then on this sure foun- 
dation what a beautiful and effective life may 
be built ! A well-built life is just the laying 
up of one grace and good deed upon another ; 
of faith and patience and temperance and 
benevolence and courage and self-denial and 
brotherly love. It is growing in grace. It is 
the sacred architecture of the Holy Spirit. 
"Ye are God's building." 

A well-built Christian is harmonious in all 
his parts. He is not a jumble of opposites 
and inconsistencies — to-day devout and to- 
morrow frivolous, to-day liberal and to-mor- 
row stingy, to-day fluent in prayer and to-mor- 
row fluent in falsehoods. He does not keep 
the fourth commandment on Sunday and break 
the eighth commandment by cunning frauds 
on Monday. His philanthropy does not out- 
run his conscientiousness, nor do his spiritual 
fervors outrun his inward faith and self-deni- 



BUILDING ON THE ROCK. 21 

als. Some professed Christians are as unfin- 
ished as the cathedral at Cologne, where vast 
towers have risen no higher than mere stumps, 
and where ugly w^ooden cranes conceal an ex- 
quisite Gothic tracery. Do not expect to reach 
absolute Christian perfection; but that is no 
reason why you should settle down content 
with a wilful and wretched imperfection. 

As we close, we point you to the Bock of 
Ages — Christ Jesus. You never can be saved 
but through him. Every hour is worse than 
lost that you spend awaj^ from Christ. There 
is a dying-bed spreading for you somewhere, 
my friend ; there is a shroud somewhere weav- 
ing. There is a storm coming that will wrench 
and try your spiritual hope to the utmost. 
See to it that you are well founded. The way 
to J avoid the sand is to strike for the rock. 
Dig deep, and lay your foundation well. He 
that heareth the voice of Christ, and doeth Ids 
will, he is the wise man who buildeth his house 
upon the rock. Steadily the structure rises, 
stone on stone. Sometimes in tears and trials 
the builder buildeth ; sometimes through 
storms of persecution and reproach. But he 



22 



HEART-LIFE. 



builds for eternity. And it sliall be of such 
as he that the celestial chant shall yet be 
heard: "Here is the patience of the saints; 
here are they that kept the commandments of 
God, and the faith of Jesus." 






The Rock of ^Ages. 

HE southern coast of England 
has been the birthplace of the 
grandest hymns in our language. 
Within that belt of land, sacred to 
devout poesy, Charles Wesley caught 
the inspiration of many of his hymns, and 
there, we believe, he composed that 'delicious 
love-lay of the heart, 

"Jesus, lover of my soul." 

On the shores of Hampshire mused and sang 
good Isaac Watts; and in the same county, 
modest Anne Steele breathed forth her tender 
songs of consolation. In old Kent lived Ed- 
ward Perronett, who struck that thrilling note, 
"All hail the power of Jesus' name !" 

In beautiful Devonshire, the Eev. Henry F. 
Lyte chanted his last sweet melody, 

"Abide with me ; fast falls the eventide." 



24: HEART-LIFE. 

A few miles from him dwelt Charlotte Elliott, 
the sister of a clergyman : she w T ent about do- 
ing good; but the grandest work* God ever put 
into her hands was to write, 

" Just as I am, without one plea." 
Devonshire is certainly honored above all the 
shires of Britain, for on that poetic soil Au- 
gustus Toplady gave birth to the most glorious 
hymn of modern times, the Bock of Ages. The 
"Dies Ir^" is the king of mediaeval hymns; 
but of modern songs of Zion, the "Rock of 
Ages " wears the crown. 

It is a curious fact that the spiritual birth- 
place of the heart which fashioned this hymn 
was a ham ! Augustus Toplady w r as the son 
of a British officer. After Major Toplady' s 
death his widow took the lad Augustus on a 
visit to Ireland. While at Codymain, the boy 
of sixteen found his way into a barn, wdiere an 
earnest but uneducated layman was preaching 
on the text, " Ye who sometime were afar off, 
are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The 
homespun preacher "builded better than he 
knew," for his sermon converted the soul which 
gave to the church of God the Rock of Ages. 



THE ROCK OF AGES. 25 

Let no man feel that he is doing a small thing 
when he is proclaiming Jesus and the great 
salvation even to peasants in a cow-house, or 
to sailors on the docks. Probably that ob- 
scure Irish preacher has overheard ten thou- 
sand echoes of his sermon in the heavenly 
world. 

Toplady was ordained to the ministry in 
1762, and began to preach on the banks of the 
Otter. His career was a short one, for he died 
at the age of thirty-eight. He lived fast and 
worked fiercely. James Hamilton says of him, 
that "like a race-horse, all nerve and fire, his 
life was on tiptoe, and his delight was to get 
over the ground." He composed in hot haste. 
Certainly some of his sharp controversial 
papers were thrown off as from a furnace, for 
they scorched terribly. 

Even when he wrote his magnificent mas- 
terpiece, the "Bock of Ages," he could not 
resist the temptation to give a sly thrust at 
those who he insisted were believers in " Per- 
fectionism." So he entitled his hymn when 
he printed it, " A living and dying prayer of 
the holiest believer in the world." This was as 



26 HEART-LIFE. 

much, as if lie had said : " The most sanctified 
soul in the world must come down on his 
knees, and confess, 'nothing in my hands I 
bring,' and ' vile I to this fountain fly.' ' 

Glorious child of song ! he has gone where 
the strife of tongue's has ceased and contro- 
versies are for ever hushed. Perhaps he and 
Wesley have sung each others hymns in glory, 
and been puzzled to find out which of the two 
was the "Calvinist," As we Presbyterians 
sing with tears of joy, 

4 'Jesus, lover of my soul," 

so our Methodist brethren have cheered many a 
love-feast by pouring forth the inspiring strain, 

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee !" 

Toplady's hymn is as universally popular as 
the sunshine or the vernal flowers. It has 
been translated into almost every tongue. Dr. 
Pomeroy went into a church in Constantino- 
ple, where a company of Armenians were sing- 
ing a hymn' which so moved them that the 
tears were trickling down their cheeks. He 
inquired what they were singing? A man 



THE KOCK OF AGES. 27 

present translated the v/ords, and lo! they 
were the dear old lines of Kock of Ages! 
When Prince Albert of England was dying, 
his lips feebly murmured the sweet words of 
Toplady's hymn. And so it came about that 
the dying prince laid hold of those precious 
thoughts which had their original root in the 
rude discourse of an obscure layman in an 
Irish barn ! Truly the religion of Jesus aba- 
seth the proud and exalteth the lowly. Kings 
and beggars must go down into the dust 
alike, where the blood of the atoning Lamb is 
streaming. 

"We do not dare to attempt the critical anal- 
ysis of Toplady's wonderful hymn. Just as 
soon would we pull a tuberose to pieces to 
find out where the delicious odor was lurking. 
The hymn itself is absolute "perfection. Of all 
its hues the two finest are those which are 
carved on a monument in Greenwood, beneath 
a figure of Faith kneeling before a cross : 

"Nothing in my hand I bring, 
Simply to thy cross I cling." 

No device in all Greenwood is more impres- 
sive ; and no words can express more beauti- 



28 HEART-LIFE. 

fully the entire enipty-handedness with which 
a poor, weak, sinful soul comes to grasp the 
Divine Redeemer as its last and only hope. 
The essence of the gospel is in this matchless 
couplet. It has wrought itself into ten thou- 
sand prayers for pardon ; it has been the con- 
densed " confession of faith" for ten thousand 
penitents. 

Two slight changes have been made in Top- 
lady's hymn. The word "tracts" has been 
superseded by "worlds" in the last verse. In 
the same verse the author also wrote, 

"When ray eye-strings break in death." 

Perhaps he had learned the medical fact, 
that at the moment of dissolution, a delicate 
tendon near the eye sometimes breaks, and 
causes a flow of tears. But the allusion was 
more anatomical than poetic, and the word 
"heart-strings" is substituted in our common 
version. 

This glorious hymn yet waits for a tune wor- 
thy of it. The one in ordinary use is by no 
means of the highe'st order. Some master of 
music ought to compose an "air" which shall 
describe the majestic onward and upward 



THE BOCK OF AGES. 29 

movement of the thought to its subhme cli- 
max. The whole hymn is a fervent outcry of 
a broken heart to Jesus. It begins in plain- 
tive confession, 

"Not the labor of my hands 
Can fulfil thy law's commands." 

Then the suppliant owns that he is naked, 
empty-handed, and helpless and foul, and calls 
out imploringly — 

" Wash me, Saviour, or I die /" 

Then his bursting heart begins to yearn and 
stretch onward. It reaches on to the dread 
hour when the heart-strings are snapping at 
the touch of death. It sweeps out into eter- 
nity; it soars to the judgment-seat. It be- 
holds the great white throne! And casting 
itself down before that throne, it pours forth 
its last piercing but triumphant cry, 

"Kock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in theel" 




oining the Lord Jesus. 



j-° 



'OINING the church is one 
tiling, but joining the Lord 
Jesus is quite another thing; and 
only those who have done the sec- 
ond have any clear right to do the 
first. The main cause of inconsistency and 
failure in the life of too many professors of 
religion, is that they make a formal union with 
the church without any heart-union to Christ. 
Almost their solitary act of loyalty was their 
standing up to respond to a church covenant 
before the pulpit. From that time onward 
their divine Master had no more of them than 
their idle name on the roll of his followers. 
They enlisted; they entered their names on 
the record, and straightway are heard of no 
more. They made no tie to anything but an 
organized body of professed Christians ; they 
did not knit their souls to the Saviour. 



JOINING THE LOKD JESUS. 31 

" But am I not to join the church ?" inquires 
some one who is indulging a hope of pardon 
and of the new birth. Yes, friend, join the 
church, provided that you have already joined 
Jesus. If you unite yourself to nothing stronger 
than to a company of frail, fallible fellow-crea- 
tures, and expect them to tow you along by 
the power of their fellowship and prayers, then 
you have but a poor chance of reaching the 
"desired haven." But genuine conversion 
unites your heart in clinging faith to the Friend 
of sinners. "When you take the step of con- 
fessing this faith before men, you literally and 
truly join the Lord. You join your weakness 
to his strength; you join your ignorance to 
his wisdom, your unworthiness to his merits, 
your frailty to his enduring might, and your 
poverty to his boundless wealth. The fair 
peasant-girl who married an emperor of Prus- 
sia became a sharer of his palace and his 
crown. When you wed your heart and hand 
to Jesus, you become a sharer in his kingdom 
and crown, a joint heir with Christ ! The joint 
heir has the promise of the Father's love, of 
the indwelling of the Spirit, of the peace of 



32 HEAET-LIFE. 

God, of pleasures for evermore, and of the 
society of all the just made perfect through- 
out eternity! "Where I am, there shall ye 
be also." 

"What a glorious thought this is! "What a 
different conception it is from that of merely 
"joining a church" of fellow-creatures. You 
really join Christ. Tour heart joins his heart. 
Tour life is knit by hidden links to his ; because 
he lives, ye shall live also. Tour destiny is 
bound to his ; and ye shall be kept by the power 
of God, through faith, unto salvation. If you 
have a real faith, however feeble, confess it. If 
you have renounced sin and self, and come to 
Jesus, then " join yourself to the Lord in a per- 
petual covenant, that shall not be forgotten." 

Many who have a secret faith in Christ hold 
back too long from a piiblic confession. "Wait- 
ing to become stronger, they only grow weaker. 
They are like the timid child who should try 
to learn to walk without ever getting on its feet. 
For fear of a tumble they lie still. On the 
whole, I rather like the venture of Simon Pe- 
ter out of the fishing-boat to walk to Jesus on 
the waves; for, though he began to sink, he 



JOINING THE LORD JESUS. 33 

also began to pray. Ha found that sinking 
times were praying times ; and when we learn 
that, we know where to reinforce our own weak- 
ness by laying hold on the infinite strength. 
But for a true convert to confess Christ is 
really not a walking on the water. He has 
under him the solid rock of God's promises. 

" How soon should I join the church ?" The 
best answer we can give to this question is, 
Just as soon as your heart has joined the 
Saviour. Not one moment before that. When 
God gives conversion he demands confession. 
Make the most of your early love. If your 
heart goes out to Jesus in loving trust, then 
stand up for him and with him, and joining 
your hand to his, take the blessed vows of 
spiritual wedlock. The whole drift of the 
Bible is in favor of prompt approach to Christ, 
prompt trust in Christ, prompt confession of 
Christ, and prompt obedience to his every call 
to duty. The teaching of the word is, "What- 
soever He saith to you, do it." But the devil's 
version reads, " Whatsoever He saith to you, 
delay it" 

Our pastoral observation has convinced us 

Heart-life. 3 



34 HEART-LIFE. 

that people sometimes commit two great mis- 
takes. The saddest mistake is committed by 
those who join a church without joining Christ. 
This solemn mockery of professing a faith that 
is not really possessed, has cost many a one 
the most indescribable misery and mischief. 
May God in his mercy kfeep you from such a 
false step ; it may be a fatal one. 

The other mistake is that of delaying the 
acknowledgment and open confession of that 
blessed Saviour, who, when he gave us him- 
self, demands that we give ourselves to him. 
Have you given your heart to Jesus ? Then 
give him your hand in a public and perpetual 
covenant, that shall never be forgotten. 





Wanted — TVLore Calebs. 

i i C^MjXf-irVB^/ 5 HO is Caleb ? I never heard 
of hira." That is quite pos- 
sible ; for in the- Bible gallery of 
characters there are some modest 
people whose presence we only 
discover as blind men find out rose-bushes — 
by their fragrance. Dorcas probably made no 
sensation in Joppa ; but when Dorcas' fingers 
grew quiet under the grave-clothes, Joppa 
found out what they had lost, and the poor 
women came in and preached her funeral ser- 
mon in warm tear-drops on her silent face. 
To this same class belong Ezra, the scribe; 
and Hannah, the praying mother; and An- 
drew, who believed in personal effort; and 
Onesiphorus, who was not ashamed of Paul's 
chain. Caleb stands in this catalogue — a 



38 HEART-LIFE. 

type of thorough-going servants of God, who 
do a great deal with but little noise, who stand 
meekly and steadily at their posts of duty, who 
never shirk their share of toil or danger, who 
do not attract much attention until they are 
gone! Then how we miss them in the church, 
in society, in the Sunday-school ! How the 
family or the neighborhood suffer for the want 
of them ! How hard it is to get along without 
them! 

Caleb's whole biography is condensed into 
a few bright sentences. He was the chieftain 
of a clan in Israel, was selected as one of the 
deputation to go down and spy out the land 
of Canaan ; he came back, helping to carry the 
luscious load of Eshcol grapes, and made a 
strong report in favor of the immediate occu- 
pation of the land; and when the panic-strick- 
en people clamored for retreat on account of 
"the giants there," Caleb came to the front 
and made a ringing speech, in the face of pol- 
troons who stood with stones in their hands to 
batter him to the ground. God's verdict on 
the man's steadfast heroism was in these brief 
words: "My servant Caleb will I bring into 



WANTED— MORE CALEBS. 37 

the land, who hath followed me faithfully." In 
another passage it reads, " He hath followed 
me wholly" In still another it is written, "He 
hath followed me fully" God was as good as 
his word. "While the cowards and the rebels 
all perished in the wilderness, stout, steady old 
Caleb lived to own the beautiful acres on the 
hills of Hebron, and in full view of the verdant 
vale of Eshcol. "When the long march and 
the bloody war were over, he tasted of the 
grapes of victory — even as our Lincoln did for 
a few brief hours before his martyrdom. 

Caleb is the man most needed in our church- 
es in these latter days. He is the type-man 
for thorough-going fidelity. He followed the 
Lord fully. What we want to make churches 
vigorous and successful is, not bustle, but busi- 
ness; not parade and puffery, but patience, 
prayer, and persevering work. We want the 
full following of Christ with the whole heart, 
for the whole time, and for the whole life cam- 
paign. Christ started his church on the prin- 
ciple of entire consecration. Over the door- 
way he wrote, " Whosoever would follow me, 
let him leave all!" Again he said, "Ye cannot 



38 HEART-LIFE. 

serve God and mammon." And again lie said, 
"He that is not for me is against ma" It was 
thorough-going discipleship or nothing. " Sell 
all that thou hast and follow me" frightened 
the poor selfish young ruler back to his farm 
and to his fate. Christ would have no half- 
hearted disciples. He sifted his followers, 
and out of the whole number there remained 
eleven men and a few faithful women to lay 
the foundation of his church on the eve of 
Pentecost. 

To follow Jesus fully requires a whole-heart- 
ed conversion at .the start. Half-way converts 
make half-way Christians. Some men's boughs 
hang over on the church side of the wall, but 
their roots are on the world's side. Such bear 
nothing but leaves. " Many lay false and bas- 
tard foundations," said quaint old Rutherford; 
" and they get Christ for as good as half noth- 
ing, and never had a sick night of sorrow for 
sin. This mdketli loose worh" True enough; 
and, unless the conversion is radical and thor- 
ough, unless the submission of the soul to 
Christ is without compromise and conditions, 
there will be half-heartedness and halting to 



WANTED — MORE CALEBS. 39 

the last. Caleb, we are told, "had another 
spirit within him." 

But there is prodigious power in singleness 
of love for Jesus — in the doing "just one 
thing," and that is to live solely for the Mas- 
ter. A man of very moderate talents and 
endowments becomes a leading mind as soon 
as Christ gets complete hold of him. I can 
point to more than one plain, modest, mod- 
erately-educated Christian who has attained 
to a great propelling power in the church sim- 
ply from the momentum of his godliness. He 
follows Jesus so heartily, so projectively, that 
he carries others along with him by his sheer 
momentum. And that is not brain-power, or 
purse-power mainly, but heart-power. 

So it comes about that thorough godliness 
outstrips genius in the pupit. Thorough-going 
piety is the first requisite for the church offi- 
cer, for the Sunday-school teacher, for the 
leadership of a class, of a meeting, or of any 
movement. Thorough-going piety never com- 
mutes with the Master for half-fare, never 
whimpers, "I pray thee, have me excused;" 
never interprets the Bible in the lax and lati- 



40 HEAKT-LIFE. 

tudinarian sense; and when there is a doubt 
on any point, gives God and not himself the 
benefit of it. Such a Christian "loves duty, 
even hi all the wholesome severities of it." If 
his religion has ever a necessary pain or a 
pinch in it, he bears it without flinching. He 
never imitates Peter Pindar's pilgrim, who, 
having been commanded to make a long jour- 
ney with peas in his shoes, took the sly pre- 
caution to boil his peas before he started. 
Thousands are quite willing to go heavenward 
with us provided they have a choice seat in 
the cushioned car; but commend me to the 
Calebs who, discerning the land afar off by 
faith, are ready for a lifetime march to reach 
it, over rough roads and with stony pillows for 
a bivouac. 

I have come to consider those the best mem- 
bers in my church who are quite as good in 
ordinary times as they are amid the fervors of 
a revival. When the church is all aglow , and 
its meetings are magnetic with enthusiasm, how 
easy it is to catch fire, to sing, to shout ho- 
sanna, and to go into raptures on the mount. 
It is a luxury to be a Christian then. But 



WANTED— MORE CALEBS. 41 

when the fervor is gone, and the crowd is gone, 
and the flesh is weak or weary, and the very- 
air of the room numbs the spirit, then to keep 
aglow r , and to kindle others also, requires the 
living fire of Christ Jesus in the soul. It was 
easy for Caleb to exercise faith while he was 
picking Eshcol's grapes and feasting on the 
fresh figs ; but to keep up his faith amid an 
army of poltroons, and to hold out for nigh 
forty years in the desert, demanded and de- 
veloped the most resolute pluck and principle. 
A revival brings great glory to the Lord, but 
it also brings great disgrace upon the church, 
for it reveals so painfully the indolence and 
worldliness of those who never lift a finger for 
Christ at any other time. Revivals fill the 
church ; seasons of dullness and declension 
winnow the church. We pastors never love 
our Calebs so well as we do in those dry, dreary 
spells of comparative drought ; for they work 
right along, without any need of external ex- 
citements. They are the salt that never loses 
its savor. 

If seasons of spiritual declension sift our 
churches, so do times of swimming worldly 



42 HEART-LIFE. 

prosperity. Then we find out how many Ca- 
lebs there are who can keep lowly in heart 
while their income is running up from ten 
thousand to a hundred thousand. When silly 
furores and fashions rage, the chaff in our 
churches always goes with the gale ; but stead- 
fast, solid Caleb never has but one fashion, 
and that is to follow Christ. His first rule 
always is, to please God, which trieth the heart, 
rather than man. 

"We have said enough to indicate who the 
Calebs are. They are the sinew of the church. 
Blessed is the pastor "who hath his quiver 
full of them!" To those who inquire, "How 
shall my church be developed?" we answer: 
Ask God for more Calebs, and use such Calebs 
as you have. Remember, too, that a hundred 
half-Christians do not make a single whole 
one. Every addition made to the weight of 
our own personal Christianity adds to the 
weight and momentum of the church of Christ. 




The 



f 



ight-Bell of Prayer. 






<( 




ULL the night-bell." This is 
the inscription we often see 
written on the doorpost of the shop 
in which medicines are sold. Some 
of us have had our experiences with 
night-bells when sudden illness has overtaken 
some member of our households, or when the 
sick have rapidly grown worse. How have we 
hurried through the silent streets, when only 
here and there a light glimmered from some 
chamber window! How eagerly have we 
pulled the night-bell at our physician's door; 
and then, with prescription in hand, have 
sounded the alarm at the place where the 
remedy was to be procured. Those of us who 
have had these lonely midnight walks, and 
have given the summons for quick relief, know 



44 HEART-LIFE. 

the meaning of that -Bible-text, " Arise ! cry 
out in the night ! 

Seasons of trouble and distress are often 
spoken of in God's word under the simile of 
night. The word vividly pictures those times 
when the skies are darkened, and the lights 
that gladden the soul have gone out, and it is 
not easy to find one's way. Enemies may be 
stealing on us in the darkness. Apprehensions 
gather like fancied spectres, to make us uneasy 
or afraid. If prosperity be likened to the 
noonday, the seasons of perplexity or distress 
may be likened to the "night." Perhaps some 
of the readers of this paragraph may be in a 
gloomy night-season of poverty, or bereave- 
ment, or of spiritual doubt and depression. 
Each heart knoweth its own bitterness. Friend, 
arise, and pull the night-bell of prayer ! God 
your Father says to you, "Call upon me in 
the time of trouble ; I will deliver thee, and 
thou shalt glorify me." Centuries ago it was 
said of certain people, "They cried unto the 
Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them 
out of their distresses." 

There are different kinds of prayer. There 



THE NIGHT-BELL OF PEAYER. 45 

is the calm communion of the soul with God. 
There is the affectionate converse of the be- 
liever with him, in which faith feeds on the 
promises, and recounts its, mercies, and finds 
its meditations to be sweet. Then, too, there 
is the sharp, piercing cry of anguish, or the 
earnest appeal of importunity, which will not 
let God go without an immediate response. 
Christ described the beseeching eagerness of 
this style of prayer, when he told his disciples 
about a certain housekeeper who went to a 
friend's house at midnight, and clamored for 
the loan of three loaves of bread to feed un- 
expected guests, until, " because of his impor- 
tunity" he got all the bread that he needed. 
There are many varieties of night-calls for 
relief, from the sudden cry of our little ones in 
their cribs, to the shout for "help!" in the 
street, or the eager call under the physician's 
window. These are all types of the prayer 
which you are to pour out into the ear of God 
in seasons of difficulty or distress or danger. 

"If pains afflict, or wrongs oppress, 
If cares distract, or fears dismay, 
If gnilt deject, if sin distress, 

The remedy's before thee— pray. " 



46 HEART-LIFE. 

" This is all a very pretty theory," some of 
you may say, " and it has a very pious sound. 
But please to tell me what actual and positive 
good it can do me. Does it really move God ? 
Does it really bring relief ?" Such cavils are 
as common as breathing. The devil can sug- 
gest them in a hundred forms ; and it is aston- 
ishing how much readier some people are .to 
believe the father of lies, than to believe their 
Father in heaven. 

Does the prayer of faith really move God ? 
To this we can only reply, that God himself 
tells us that it does actually produce that state 
of things in which it is right and in accordance 
with his will to bestow the asked-for blessing. 
God tells us that he loves to be asked, and is 
the rewarder of them who diligently seek him. 
He tells us that the fervent effectual prayer of 
the righteous availeth much. He bids us ask, 
and we shall receive. His word abounds in 
narratives of the actual bestowal of things 
which his children have besought him to give 
them. When his needy or suffering ones have 
pulled the night-bell of prayer with strong 
faith, he has relieved them of their distress, or 



THE NIGHT-BELL OF PRAYER. 47 

removed the evils they suffered from, or else 
given to them supernatural grace to bear their 
burdens. On his bed of anguish Hezekiah 
rang this night-bell, and God heard it, and 
spared his life. In his dungeon at Jerusalem 
Peter cried unto the Lord, and a whole prayer- 
meeting cried at the same time for his deliver- 
ance, and God sent his angel and brought the 
apostle out of the prison. Answered prayers 
cover the field of providential history as flowers 
cover "Western prairies. Answered prayers 
hover around the communion-tables of our 
churches, in seasons of -revival, as we have 
seen great flocks of birds descend into a 
meadow. Answered prayers have made the 
pulpits of Payson and Burns and Spurgeon 
powerful. Answered prayers have visited sick- 
rooms like angels, to restore to life ; or if infi- 
nite wisdom had appointed to the sick to die, 
the sting of death has been turned to the song 
of victory. "I cannot get on without three 
hours a day of prayer now," said Martin Lu- 
ther in the thick of his great fight with the 
man of sin. Are you wiser than Luther ? 
Some people pull the bell of prayer, and 



48 HEART-LIFE. 

then run away without stopping for the an- 
swer. Sometimes they grow discouraged, and 
mistake a delay for a total denial. Sometimes 
the thing asked for is not actually bestowed, 
but in lieu of it our all-wise Father grants us 
something far better. He does not spare our 
sick darling's life, but he takes the little one 
home to heaven, and draws our poor hearts 
up with it unto himself. God answers prayers 
according to his owtl wisdom and love, and 
not according to our short-sightedness. But 
I no more believe that God leaves a right 
prayer, offered in the right spirit, to pass un- 
noticed, than I believe that he will let the 
whole summer pass over without a drop of 
rain or dew. 

In securing answers to our requests, we 
must cooperate with the Lord. Some people 
ask him to do their work. "Father," said a 
little boy, after he had heard him pray fer- 
vently for the poor at family worship—" father, 
I wish I had your corn-crib." "Why, my 
son ?" " Because then I would answer your 
prayer." I have heard professing Christians 
pray for the conversion of their children, while 



THE NIGHT-BELL OF PRAYER. 49 

they were taking them night after night into 
scenes of frolic and dissipation. We may 
make fools of ourselves, but the Almighty will 
never let us make a fool of him. God is not 
mocked; whatsoever we sow, we shall also 
reap. Neither does God ever mock us. 

Then, my friend, if you will only " arise and 
cry in the night," you may be sure that your 
Father will hear the bell. He will send the 
right answer ; and if ifc is not best that he lift 
off your load, he will give you grace to carry 
it. Pull the bell with a strong hand ! You '11 
never doubt that God is a prayer-answerer 
when you get to heaven. There is no night 
there ! He who has often arisen in the night 
of trouble and sorrow here to ring the bell of 
prayer, with a trembling hand, will then stand 
in the morning light of glory on the sea of 
glass, like unto pure gold. 





True Prayers .n£Yei\_ Lost, 




T is hard to believe that the fer- 
vent prayer of the righteous man 
is ever lost. The answer may be long 
delayed. It may come in a manner 
wholly unlocked for. The return of 
the prayer may be such that it may not be 
recognized by the devout soul who uttered it. 
But it is not lost. 

1. For example, there are some prayers 
which we cannot expect to see answered im- 
mediately. I was at a monthly concert last 
evening, where God's people were pleading 
with him for the conversion of the world. 
None of that praying company had any ex- 
pectation of living to see the day when the 
last heathen nation should surrender to the 
victorious Jesus. Yet their petitions will never 



TRUE PRAYERS NEVER LOST. ■ 51 

be forgotten. Those pleading disciples will 
yet behold the glorious fulfilment of their de- 
sires from the battlements of heaven. In our 
own experience we have seen many a prayer 
manifestly answered long after the saint who 
breathed it into the ear of the Saviour has 
gone to lay his weary head on that Saviour's 
breast. 

A dying-mother commits her beloved boy 
to a covenant-keeping God. She has often 
borne that child on the arms of faith to the 
mercy-seat. He has been the child of many 
prayers; and in the feeble utterances of her 
passing spirit another and a last petition is 
breathed forth that Christ would have mercy 
on his soul. Years roll away. The sod has 
grown green, and the rank grass has long 
waved over that mother's tomb. In some dis- 
tant land — mayhap hundreds of miles from 
that spot — a full-grown man, who has long 
been ripening in sin, is seen bowed in prayer. 
He is crying out of an agonized heart, God he 
merciful to me a sinner I Behold, he prayeth, 
and his prayer is the answer of the fervent 
petitions which his dying mother uttered many 



52 HEAET-LIFE. 

long years before. Her requests were record- 
ed in God's book of remembrance; and but 
for them we know not that the prayer of that 
penitent son would have ever ascended there. 
Let praying fathers and mothers never grow 
faint of heart. Let desponding churches, long 
unvisited by revival blessings, only close up 
their ranks more compactly about the mercy- 
seat, and besiege heaven with new importu- 
nity. For above the dark cloud of their dis- 
couragement is written, as in the clear upper 
sky, "He that asketh receiveth; and he that 
seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it 
shall be openecl." 

2. Other prayers are answered at the time 
of their utterance, but in a way so unlooked 
for that he who offered them is inclined to 
think that the very opposite of what he asked 
for has befallen him. One individual prays, 
for instance, that he may be enabled to glorify 
God. Ere he is aware, some tremendous 
calamity comes crashing down upon him, pros- 
trating him to the dust. His fortune is swept 
away ; or his schemes of promotion are blast- 
ed. A favorite child is missed from the cradle 



TRUE PRAYERS NEVER LOST. 53 

or the hearthstone. His hopes are withered 
like grass. God has answered his prayer, but 
has answered it, as the Psalmist says, "by 
terrible things." From under the overwhelm- 
ing pressure of affliction he flees to Jesus, his 
divine Comforter, and oh, how his love is kin- 
dled by the contact ! How his latent faith is 
called forth ! How he glorifies God in the fur- 
nace of trial which is purging away the dross 
of selfishness and worldliness, and making his 
pure gold shine with tenfold brightness ! 

"We once saw an earnest inquirer who was 
praying most importunately for faith in Christ, 
and for peace to his troubled soul. But while 
he prayed, a cloud of darkness gathered across 
his horizon. And against that cloud, which 
swung like a funeral pall before his vision, 
played the sharp lightnings of the Almighty's 
wrath. The thunders of God's law roared 
against him. Instead of peace came only the 
sword. Instead of the calm he sought came 
the fearful tempest; and, under the stress of 
its terrors, the poor baffled soul betakes him- 
self to the "covert" which Christ has raised 
on Calvary. There he finds the peace he so 



54 HEART-LIFE. 

earnestly prayed for. There the long-sought 
confidence in Jesus pours its fulness through 
the soul. His prayer was answered — first by 
terrible things, but at last by the very bless- 
ings which he desired. And without that 
storm the true calm would have never come. 
Had the sinner not been led to that frightful 
view of his own guilt and condemnation, he 
might never have gone to Christ, and thus 
could not have known true abiding peace. As 
he looks back over the dark valley of sorrow 
through which the divine hand has wondrously 
led him, and sees that no other way would so 
surely bring him to the cross, he feels a re- 
newed assurance that no true prayer is ever 
lost ; he now knows that he that asketh aright 
will always receive, and he that seeketh will 
surely find. His experience is worth all it 
cost him. 

3. Once more, let us remark that the peti- 
tions of believers are often answered accord- 
ing to their intention, and not according to the 
strict letter of the request. The utterer of the 
prayer sought only the glory of God ; but, in 
his ignorance, asked for wrong things. God 



TRUE PRAYERS NEVER LOST. 55 

hears and answers him ; but the blessing grant- 
ed is something very different from what the 
believer expected. The case of Paul is a beau- 
tiful illustration of this. He is sorely afflicted 
by a "thorn in the flesh." What the precise 
nature of the affliction was, we know not. 
Perhaps it was a severe malady; perhaps a 
besetting sin ; perhaps a mortifying deformity 
of body or of character. He beseeches God 
in three earnest petitions that this "thorn" 
might depart from him. His prayers are 
heard. They are answered. But, instead of 
the removal of the thorn comes the cheering 
assurance, " My grace is sufficient for thee.'' 
The Lord does not take away the trial, but 
gives him all that is needed to make it endu- 
rable; thus the Divine glory and Paul's spirit- 
ual well-being were more certainly advanced 
than if the prayer had been answered strictly 
according to its letter. 

The prayer was not lost. That God hears 
every sincere prayer, who can doubt? The 
skeptic must seal his vision, lest, coming to 
the light, he shall be persuaded against him- 
self. He must mutilate or destroy the shining 



56 HEAET-LIFE. 

record of God's providential dealings with tlie 
children of faith. He must erase from the 
Bible the animating narrative of Jacob's mid- 
night struggles, the thrilling scenes of Elijah's 
wrestlings at Carmel and at Zarephath, the 
"evening oblations" of Daniel, and the an- 
gelic deliverance of Peter from the prison cell. 
He must destroy many a leaf from the Chris- 
tian's diary, on which devout gratitude has 
written, "This day I learned anew that my 
heavenly Father hears and answers prayer." 
He must give the lie to omniscient Love, which 
has uttered in the ear of all the needy, sor- 
rowing, guilty household of humanity, "Ask, 
and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
knock, and it shall be opened to you." "And 
whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will 
I do, that the Father may be glorified in the 
Son." 





jSpi ritual Dyspeptics. 

HEBE is a class of weak-handed 
and feeble-kneed professors in 
Christ's church who are self-made 
invalids. Their spiritual debility is 
the direct result of their own sins 
and short-comings. In their case, as in the 
physical hygiene, disease is the inevitable 
punishment of transgression against the laws 
of health. 

Is not the inebriate's bloated and poisoned 
frame the immediate legacy of his bottle? Is 
not a shattered nervous system the torment- 
ing bequest which a high-pressure career of 
sensuality leaves to the transgressor? The 
indolence which never earns its daily bread 
cannot earn the appetite to enjoy it ; the glut- 



58 HEART-LIFE. 

tony which gorges the stomach is but fatten- 
ing an early banquet for the worms. Dys- 
pepsia is only God's appointed health-officer, 
stationed . at the gateway of excess, to warn off 
all who approach it, and to punish, those who 
will persist in entering the forbidden ground. 
In like manner spiritual disease is the inevita- 
ble result of committed sin, or of neglect of 
religious duty. It requires no profound skill 

to detect the cause of Mr. A 's dyspepsia, 

or Deacon B 's spiritual palsy, or of poor 

Mr. C 's leprosy. How can a Christian 

be healthy who never works? How can a 
man's faith be strong who never enters his 
closet? How can a man's benevolence be 
warm who never gives? A want of appetite 
for giving always brings on a lean visage in 
the church ; but I do like to hear my neigh- 
bor M pray at the monthly concert, for 

the fluency of devotion is quickened by his 
fluency of purse. He dares to ask God's help 
in the salvation of sinners, for he is doing his 
own utmost too. And I have known one reso- 
lute, sagacious, Christ-loving woman to do in 
a mission-school what Florence Nightingale 



SPIRITUAL DYSPEPTICS. 59 

did in the hospitals of Scutari ; that is, teach 
the nurses how to cure, as well as the sick 
how to recover. 

If this brief paragraph falls under the eye 
of any spiritual dyspeptic, let us offer to him 
two or three familiar counsels. My friend, 
your disease and debility are your own fault, 
not your misfortune. It is not a "visitation 
of God," but a visitation of the devil that has 
laid you on your back, and made you well- 
nigh useless in the church, in the Sabbath- 
school, and in every enterprise of Christian 
charity. Having brought on your own mal- 
ady, you must be your own restorer, by the 
help of the divine Physician. You are not 
only useless to your pastor, but uncomforta- 
ble to yourself. Tou must get well. Let us 
tell you how. 

1. You need a wholesome diet. Instead of 
the surfeit of daily newspapers and political 
journals, or the spiced stimulants of fiction, 
give your hungry soul the bread of life. Your 
moral powers are weak for want of nourish- 
ment. There has been a starvation of Bible- 
truth, of sound experimental works, of in- 



60 HEAET-LIFE. 

spiring religions biography, of " books that 
are books." Nothing will give sinew and 
bone to your piety like the thorough reading 
and thorough digestion of the Bible. All the 
giants in the history of the church have been 
large and hungry feeders on the Bible. 

2. Tou want exercise. • God has given you 
powers and faculties and affections to serve 
him with. But for want of use, those limbs 
of the soul are as powerless as the bodily 
limbs of a fever patient who has not left his 
couch for a fortnight. Never will you recover 
your appetite for the word and the ordinances, 
never will the flush of spiritual joy mantle 
your countenance, until you have laid hold of 
hard, self-denying work. Nothing will impart 
such earnestness to your prayers as to spend 
an hour before them by the bedside of the 
sick, or in close conversation with an inquirer 
for salvation ; nothing will excite a better ap- 
petite for a Sabbath sermon than a morning 
spent in husiness-like devotion to your Sabbath- 
school class ; and a little uphill work in behalf 
of some discouraging movement of reform, will 
harden your muscle amazingly. Oberlin, Wil- 



SPIRITUAL DYSPEPTICS. 61 

berforce, Elizabeth Fry never knew the mean- 
ing of "dyspepsia." You are dying from con- 
finement and indolence. There is but one 
cure for spiritual laziness, and that is — work ; 
but one cure for selfishness, and that is — sac- 
rifice ; but one cure for timidity, and that is to 
plunge into a disagreeable duty before the 
shiver has time to come on. Some Christians 
are paralyzed for life by the monomania of 
fear. They remind us of an invalid who was 
afflicted by the delusion that he was made of 
pipe-clay, and if violently struck against any 
object, he should snap into fragments! He 
was only cured by a friend who drove him 
into a meadow and managed to upset the ve- 
hicle in the right place. The poor monoma- 
niac shrieked frightfully as the carriage went 
over; but he rose from the ground sound 
in mind as well as in body. Would it not be 
well for those who have trembled for years at 
the bare thought of a prayer in public, to force 
themselves into an utterance? They will 
be amazed to find how one resolute trial, in 
the strength of God, will break the tyrannous 
spell for ever. Try ! my friend ! Lay hold of 



62 HEAET-LIFE. 

any dreaded or disagreeable duty, and try. 
God never leaves his child to fail when in the 
path of obedience; for if the Christian does 
not succeed in pleasing himself by the method 
of his performance, he yet pleases God by 
the sincerity of his good endeavors. And. the 
very attempt to discharge . duty will give you 
strength. "When the duty is fairly achieved, 
the sense of having done it will send an exqui- 
site thrill of satisfaction through the soul, and 
will be a source of one of the purest joys that 
you can know this side of heaven. I question 
whether we ever realize a sweeter delight than 
when we stand beside some heaven-directed 
undertaking fairly accomplished, or some 
painful task nobly wrought out ; some trying 
testimony manfully borne, or some bitter per- 
secution fairly weathered out into the repose 
and sunshine of victory. Such joys the half- 
hearted, cowardly, dyspeptic Christian never 
experiences. The "weak hand" plucks no 
such chaplet. The "feeble knees" reach no 
such goal of triumph. They are awarded 
only to the vigorous of spiritual sinew, to the 
Bible-reader, and the Bible-worker too ! Dys- 



SPIRITUAL DYSPEPTICS 



63 



peptic brother! we commend to you the 
double remedy — Bible-diet and Bible-duty. If 
these do not restore you, we fear your case is 
past all medication. 



€ €^y 





OYABLE 



RISTIANS. 




*ATTL paints the portrait of the 
true Christian in the eighth 
verse of the closing chapter of his 
letter to the Philippians. Here it is. 
The portrait is one that he might 
have written his own name under when it was 
clone : 

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatso- 
ever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report; if there be any 
virtue and if there be any praise, think on 
these tilings." 

In the former part of the verse, Paul paints 
the strong features of the Christian — his 
truthfulness, his honesty, and his uncompro- 
mising sense of right. These are such deep 



LOVABLE CHRISTIANS. 65 

lines as Michael Angelo painted in his figure 
of Moses and of the stern heroes of the pro- 
phetic era. 

But, just as a great artist, haying delineated 
the piercing eye, the majestic brow, and the 
leonine mouth of his hero, throws in the soft 
touches that give a womanly sweetness to 
the visage, so Paul completes his portrait by 
presenting loveliness and admirableness as the 
crowning attractions of the Christian charac- 
ter. " Whatsoever things are lovely" he says, 
"and whatsoever things are of good report." 
This is the only place in the New Testament 
in which this word "lovely" is to be found. 
It literally signifies what is dear to any one. 
It is that quality in the Christian character 
that engages the affections of all who come 
into its presence. The phrase " things of good 
report" also occurs in this passage alone. It 
means that which excites admiration and wins 
approbation. The two expressions together 
signify, in plain English, " be lovable ; let your 
life win the hearts of all around you." 

It was well that the apostle put in this fin- 
ishing stroke. It was well to remind the most 



Heart-Life. 



66 HEART-LIFE. 

conscientious Christian that he should strive 
to render his religion attractive to others. 
For not every good man's piety is lovable. 
Some men's religion has too much acidity to 
taste well. Others sour their religion with an 
intense censoriousness. Their conversation 
is enough to set every one's teeth on edge. 
After an hour's talk with them, you think the 
worst of even the best men you know. They 
are crabbed Christians. Everybody respects 
them, but nobody loves them. We once had 
a venerable and most godly-minded officer in 
our church, who never did a wrong act, to my 
knowledge ; and yet he never did a pleasant 
one either. There was a deal of good solid 
"meat" in him, but no one liked to prick his 
fingers in coming at it. So the rugged old 
man was left to go on his way to heaven, 
working and praying and scolding as he 
went; but even the children in the street 
were almost afraid to speak to him. A drop 
or two of the Apostle John in his composition 
would have made him a glorious specimen of 
a Christian. He has become mellower, by this 
time, in the sunny atmosphere of heaven. 



LOVABLE CHKISTIANS. 67 

There is, also, a sanctimonious set face, 
which some people wear, that is anything but 
attractive. "We once dealt with such a man 
in business ; and we always counted carefully 
the change he gave back after a purchase. 
"We did it instinctively; for we had an uncom- 
fortable suspicion that his manner of look 
and speech was a mash to hide from the 
world a designing nature. Perhaps we did 
him injustice ; but the fault w r as his own in 
wearing so repulsive a sanctimoniousness. 

A lovable Christian is one who hits the 
golden mean between easy, good-natured lax- 
ity of conscience on the one hand, and stern, 
ungenial moroseness on the other. He is 
sound, and yet ripe, sweet and mellow. He 
never incurs contempt by yielding to men's 
sinful prejudices, nor does he incur the antip- 
athy of others by doing right in a hateful, 
surly, or bigoted way. 

Did our blessed Saviour ever fall into either 
of these extremes for a moment? "Was not 
his the sinless, incorruptible majesty that 
awed his followers, while his gentle benignity 
inspired their enthusiastic love? If Jesus 



68 HEAKT-LIFE. 

were now on earth, we can imagine that the 
poorest people would not be afraid to ap- 
proach him. Were he to enter a modern 
mission-school, as he once entered a syna- 
gogue, how the ragged youngsters would draw 
to him! If he visited our houses, how wel- 
come he would make himself at our firesides, 
and how our children would love to climb on 
his lap and kiss that sweet, pensive, benignant 
face! There is. nothing derogatory .to his 
divine dignity in this. Christ Jesus drew to 
him poor, suffering women, and outcast publi- 
cans, and sinners that had a sore heartache, 
and troops of little children who rejoiced to 
receive his benediction or to sing hosannas in 
his praise. 

Now what Christ was every Christian 
should strive to be. He is our model, not 
only in spotless holiness, but in ivinsomeness of 
character also. Let us learn of him. Let us 
learn from him how to combine the most rigid 
sense of justice, purity and integrity with the 
lovable attractions of a sunny face, a kind 
word, an unselfish courtesy, and a genuine 
sympathy for even the most hardened sin- 



LOVABLE CHRISTIANS. 69 

ners. The worst men may scoff at Bible- 
religion, but at heart honor the consistent 
Christian who wears the beauty of holiness in 
his character and conduct. A living, lovable 
Christian is the. most powerful argument for 
the Gospel. No infidel ever yet refuted that. 
Study Christ, then. Love Christ ; get your 
heart saturated with him. Follow Christ. 
His example and his grace can turn deformity 
and sullenness and sin into the sweet comeli- 
ness of "whatsoever things are lovely, and 
whatsoever things are of good report." He 
that winneth souls is wise. But if you would 
win sinners to the Saviour, you must make 
your religion ivinsome. 






Jesus, Lover of My Soul. 

BOUT the time that Isaac Watts 
was writing, his earliest hymns at 
, Southampton, in Southern Eng- 
land, two brothers were born in 
the little town of Epworth, who 
were destined to be better known oyer the 
world than any other two men whom Britain 
produced in that half -century. "While their 
godly mother (Susannah) was dying, she said 
to her weeping household, "My children, as 
soon as my spirit is released, sing a song of 
praise to God." Among the group who joined 
in this song of triumph with faltering voices, 
were John, the founder of Methodism, and 
Chaeles, its sweet singer. John was system; 
but Charles was song. John was the Beza- 



JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL. 71 

leel who laid the foundations, and hewed out 
the pillars of the new tabernacle ; but Charles 
was the Asaph who filled it with melody. 
Methodism was builded rapidly; but the 
walls never would have gone up so fast had 
they not been built to music. 

Charles Wesley was a born poet. Like 
Toplady, he was all nerve and fire and enthu- 
siasm. God gave him a musical ear, intense 
emotions, ardent affections, and a glowing 
piety that never grew cold. He ate, drank, 
slept and dreamed nothing but hymns! He 
must have been the ready writer of at least 
four thousand. One day, while on his itiner- 
acy, his pony stumbled and threw him off. 
The only record he makes of the accident in 
his diary is this : " My companions thought I 
had broken my neck; but my leg only was 
bruised, my hand sprained, and my head 
stunned, which spoiled my making hymns 
until — next day!" Truly a man must have 
been possessed with a master-passion, who 
could have written a sentence like that. 

Wesley found his inspirations "on every 
hedge." He threw off hymns as Spurgeon 



72 HEAKT-LIFE. 

throws off sermons. For example, when he 
was preaching to a crowd of rude stonecut- 
ters and quarrymen at Portland, he turned 
his appeal into metre, and improvised a hymn, 
in which occur the vigorous lines : 

"Come, O Thou all-victorious Lord, 
Thy power to us make known ; 
Strike with the hammer of Thy word, 
And break these hearts of stone ! " 

Standing, once, on the dizzy promontory of 
Land's End, and looking down into the boil- 
ing waves on each side of the cliff, he broke 
out into these solemn and thrilling words : 

* ' Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, 
Yet how insensible ! " 

For every scene and circumstance of life, 
for prayer-meetings, for watch-nights, for love- 
feasts, and for dying hours and funerals, he 
had a holy, impassioned lay. But, like Watts, 
Cowper, and Toplady, he had his masterpiece. 
The Lord of glory bestowed on Charles "Wes- 
ley the high honor of composing the finest 
heart-hymn in the English tongue. If the 



JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL. 73 

greatest hynin of the cross is "Bock of Ages," 
and the greatest hymn of providence is Cow- 
per's "God moves in a mysterious way," and 
the grandest battle-hymn is Martin Luther's 
"God is our refuge," then it may be said, also, 
that the queen of all the lays of holy love is 
that immortal song : 

1 ' Jesus, lover of my soul ! 
Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
While the billows near me roll, 
While the tempest still is high ! " 

"Whatever may be said of "Wesley's doctrine 
of perfect holiness, there is not much doubt 
that he "attained unto perfection" when he 
wrote this hymn. It is happily married, also, 
to two exquisite tunes, "Kefuge" and "Mar- 
tyn,"both of which are worthy of the alliance. 
The first of these tunes is a gem. 

The one central, all-pervading idea of this 
matchless hymn is the soul's yearning for its 
Saviour. The figures of speech vary, but'not 
the thought. In one line we see a storm- 
tossed voyager crying out for shelter until the 
tempest is over. In another line we see a 



74 HEAKT-LIFE. 

timid, tearful child nestling in its mother's 
arms, with the words faltering on its tongue : 

"Let me to Thy bosom fly ! " 
"Hangs my helpless soul on Thee !" 

Two lines of the hymn have been breathed 
fervently and often out of bleeding hearts. 
When we were once in the valley of the 
death-shade, with one beautiful child in its 
new-made grave, and the other threatened 
with fatal disease, there was no prayer which 
which we uttered oftener than this : 

"Leave, ah ! leave me not alone ; 
Still support and comfort me." 

We do not doubt that tens of thousands of 
other bereaved and wounded hearts have 
cried this piercing cry, out of the depths : 

"Still support and comfort me ! " 

The whole hymn is at once a confession 
and a prayer. It is a prayer in metre. And 
no man is prepared to sing these words aright 
unless his soul is filled with deepest and most 
earnest longings after the Lord Jesus. What 
an. awful blasphemy it is for a set of mere 



JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL. 75 



trifling amateurs in a choir to perform this 
holy prayer merely as a feat of musical skill. 
"What college boy would dare to commit the 
Lord's prayer, or one of his pastor's public 
petitions to memory, and then speak it as a 
mere piece of declamation on the stage ? Tet 
we do not see any difference between declaim- 
ing a prayer, and the heartless mockery of 
performing, for musical effect, such words as : 

1 ' Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 
Till the storm of life is past ! " 

Or that self-surrender for the dying hour : 
" Oh. ! receive my soul at last ! " 

Words like these are too infinitely solemn 
for the mummeries of frivolous lips in the 
concert-room or the organ-loft. When a con- 
gregation sing such a hymn as "Jesus, lover 
of my soul," each one should feel as if he 
were uttering a fervent personal prayer to the 
Son of God. 

The history of Charles Wesley's incompara- 
ble hymn would fill a volume. Millions havo 
sung it, and will be singing it when the mil- 
lennial morn breaks. A coasting vessel once 



76 HEAET-LIFE. 

went on the rocks in a gale in the British 
Channel. The captain and crew took to the 
boats and were lost. They might have been 
saved if they had remained on board ; for a 
huge wave carried the vessel tip among the 
rocks, where the ebbing tide left her high and 
dry. In the captain's cabin a hymn-book 
was found lying on his table. It was opened 
to a particular page, and the pencil still lay in 
it which had marked the favorite lines of the 
stout sailor who was just about going into the 
jaws of death. YvTiile the hurricane was 
howling outside, the captain had drawn his 
pencil beside these glorious words of cheer : 

4 'Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly, 
While the billows near me roll. 

While the tempest still is high I 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past ; 
Safe into the haven guide ; 

O ! receive my soul at last ! " 

Blessed death-song! Thousands of God's 
redeemed ones have shouted it forth as the 
"haven" of rest opened its celestial glories to 
their view. If we could choose the manner 



JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL 



77 



of our departure, we would wish to die sing- 
ing: 

" Other refuge have I none ; 

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee ! 
Leave, ah ! leave me not alone ; 
Still support and comfort me ; 
All my trust on Thee is stayed, 
All my help from Thee I bring ; 
" Cover my defenceless head 

With the shadow of Thy wing ! " 






Sitting down with Jesus. 

HOSE who would feed their souls 
must often sit down with Jesus. 
In the upper chamber, at Jerusalem, 
the disciples sat with their Master 
at the board as he blessed the bread, 
and brake it, and gave it unto them. Not for 
bodily nourishment, but for the feeding of the 
soul, and the in-bringing of spiritual strength 
and comfort, did Jesus give this bread unto 
them. Herein lies one precious significance 
of the sacramental supper — it is the nourish- 
ment of a Christian's faith and love through 
a " partaking of Christ's broken body," which 
becomes to him the very bread of life. 

But not only on one day of especial service 
must the believer feed his soul ; he must be 
constantly coming out from the world's empty 
table of mockeries, and sit down in quiet 
heart-communion with the Redeemer. Don't 



SITTING DOWN WITH JESUS. 79 

you remember the scene at the miraculous 
feeding of the five thousand on the cliff above 
Lake Gennesareth? There was the hungry 
multitude. The anxious disciples worry the 
Master with such questions as: "Whence 
have we bread for so many?" " Shall we go 
into the villages and buy ? " 

"No! " replies the omnipotent Jesus; "com- 
mand the multitude to sit down'' They do 
so, in long lines, upon the verdant grass. He 
takes the five loaves and two fishes out of the 
rustic lad's basket, and begins to distribute. 
The meagre provision grows, and grows, and 
grows, until not only are all the thousands 
abundantly fed, but there is a surplus of 
broken food to fill a dozen baskets ! 

There is something akin to this in our spir- 
itual experiences. 

1. We often worry, like the disciples, about 
the best means of feeding our own souls, or 
of bringing the Gospel-bread to needy souls 
around us. We invent new methods ; we try 
all manner of devices ; we get up " attrac- 
tions" in the sanctuary and the Sabbath- 
school ; we go into all sorts of " villages to 



80 HEART-LIFE. 

buy." Oh ! if we would only sit down witli 
Jesus, and accept wliat lie bestows, with his 
rich blessing on it ! Oh ! if congregations 
would only sit and receive the Gospel of Life 
from their own Shepherd, and pray oyer it, 
and practise it! If teachers would only aim 
more to keep their classes - sitting quietly at 
the feet of Jesus, to take in his truth, and to 
think about it ! And if all of us would only 
make more of our seasons of devotion, more 
of digesting the truth, more of self study, 
more of meditation and communion with 
Christ, and more of listening to the still small 
voice of the Spirit, we should be far more 
healthy and vigorous Christians. 

The most industrious farmer must go in oc- 
casionally from the plough or the hot harvest- 
field, to sit down at his table and nourish his 
weary frame. When an army corps comes 
in sight of the enemy, after hours of hard 
marching, they must sit down awhile by the 
camp-fire and replenish their wasted strength 
by food and drink before they are able to 
make the impetuous charge, and to drag the 
heavy guns into the thunder-storm of battle. 



SITTING DOWN WITH JESUS. 81 

So every Christian toiler must needs recruit 
his spiritual strength by sitting down often 
with Jesus, to meditate, to pray, and to come 
into close communion with the Master. 
Christ himself had his Olivet of retirement. 
His disciples spent many an hour in quiet 
converse with him on the lake-side, or under 
the olive-trees, listening to his voice, and 
drinking in the inspirations of his presence 
and his grace. The healthiest Christian, and 
the one best fitted for hard service, is he who 
feeds most on Christ. Not only at the sacra- 
mental table, but every day does he partake 
of this "Bread of Life." To him the loving 
Saviour is continually saying : " If ye abide in 
me, and I in you, ye shall bear much fruit." 

2. In the second place, let us remember 
that, in order to be instructed, we must sit 
down much with Jesus. The transcendent 
truth of the new birth was revealed to Nico- 
demus when he sat as an inquirer at the 
Saviour's feet. The woman of Sychar found 
the "well" of salvation only by waiting to be 
taught by the Great Teacher, when she went 
only to fill her "water-pot," and came back 

r* 

lioait Lite. O 



82 HEART-LIFE. 

with an enlightened and refreshed and con- 
verted heart. 

In every church there are Marthas who are 
intensely busy in religious activities, and who 
achieve many happy results. But the Martha- 
side of the Christian character is only one 
side. The best disciple • cannot be always 
pushing through the round of excitement and 
zealous activity. There must be a Mary- 
side of character also ; and the most zealous 
worker needs to have instruction, prayer, re- 
flection, and heart-converse with God, or else 
he will become noisy, superficial, and shallow. 
Like Mary, he must sit down with Jesus, and 
gain deep views of his Saviour and of himself. 
If he would fill his soul, he must come often 
to the fountain-head of wisdom and of grace. 

Oh ! busy Marthas, in your round of teach- 
ing, visiting, working, planning, and almsgiving, 
go often to recruit your strength and to learn 
your duty by taking Mary's lowly place at the 
feet of your loving Lord. Let us ever bear 
in mind that the most effective preachers and 
philanthropists have been those who waited 
humbly and hungrily for the guidance and 



SITTING DOWN WITH JESUS. 83 

grace which the Lord Jesus gave them. As 
examples of this fact, let me point you to the 
apostles, and to Augustine, Luther, Pascal, 
Calvin, the "Wesleys, Wilberf orce, Payson, "Will- 
iam Allen the Quaker philanthropist, Bunyan 
the wondrous allegorist, Martyn the self-deny- 
ing missionary, and Edwards the majestic 
man of thought. All these master-spirits 
drew their inspiration from a daily com- 
munion with their divine Lord. 

3. Finally, let us also remember that in our 
hours of sorrow the one place for consolation 
is at the feet of Jesus. On that bosom the 
beloved disciple leaned. There is also room 
for us. Where the afflicted sisters of Beth- 
any sat we may sit down too, and hear the 
heavenly voice say : " I am the resurrection 
and the hfe." How sweetly fall the promises 
from his lips : " Lo ! I am with you always. 
My peace I give unto you. Let not your 
hearts be troubled ; I go to prepare a place 
for you; that where I am ye may be also." 

Then let our perpetual invitation be : Lord ! 
abide vnth us ; for it is toward evening, and 
the day is far spent ! 





HEIST does not offer to be 
simply an occasional shower of 
blessings to the faithful believer. 
He promises to be a living well. 
" The water that I give him shall be 
in him a well of water springing up into ever- 
lasting life." The deepest and the most 
urgent wants of the heart he promises to 
satisfy. 

In true conversion Christ enters the soul. 
This is the very essence and touchstone of 
conversion. "With him comes light ; with him 
comes Love; with him comes peace. The 
radical change of heart in conversion is just 
as truly a supernatural work as was the resur- 
rection of Lazarus from the cave in Bethany. 
Christ, then, enters the soul, not as a tran- 
sient visitor, but as an abiding guest. "While 



CHRIST WITHIN. 85 

he abides there he gives perennial life and 
beauty and strength to the believer. "Be- 
cause I live, ye shall live also." "Yet not I," 
said the happy, hale-hearted apostle, "but 
Christ that liveth in me." And that was the 
reason why Paul remained a Christian (a 
Christ's-man) long after the first excitement 
of the scene at Damascus had passed away. 
A ivell was opened in Paul's heart that day, 
and its deep, cool, living waters never ran 
dry. 

Men could always predict how Paul would 
act in any emergency, because the principle 
that ruled him was always the same. " The 
love of Christ constraineth me." "For me to 
live is Christ." The only reason why any 
good man continues to be a good man is that 
the well-spring in his soul never runs dry. 
Reckless, slave-hunting John Newton ceases 
to swear and scoff, and begins to pray. 
Twenty years later John Newton is still pray- 
ing, still preaching, still overflowing hi benefi- 
cence among the haunts of busy London ; 
and solely because the Lord Jesus dwelt in 
him, a source of holy affections, and an in- 



86 HEART-LIFE. 

spirer of noble and godly actions. On Sun- 
day lie preached to rich bankers and titled 
ladies. On a week-day evening he would sit 
on a three-legged stool, in his blue sailor 
jacket, and open up his rich experiences and 
wise counsels to the poorest who came to visit 
him. "I was a wild beast on the coast of 
Africa once," he used t© say; "but the Lord 
Jesus caught me and tamed me, and now 
people come to see me as they would go to 
look at the lions in the tower." "What people 
came to see and to hear and to Ioto in the 
sturdy sailor-preacher was the Christ tuJio 
dwelt within John Newton. 

Here is the secret of Christian perse- 
verance. Wesleyans and Calvinists alike 
agree in this, that a true Christian holds out 
for no other reason than that Christ holds 
out. The Fountain-head of all holy affec- 
tions, and all generous deeds, and all heroic, 
self-denying endurances, is down deep in the 
man's heart ; because Christ lives, he lives 
also. You can no more exhaust the graces of 
a John "Wesley, or an Oberlin, or a Chalmers, 
than you can pump the Thames dry at Lon- 



CHRIST WITHIN. 87 

don Bridge. Wliat a transcendent idea that 
is in Paul's prayer for his brethren: "That 
ye might be filled with all the fulness of 
God!" When, therefore, we meet with a 
man or woman who almost never disappoints 
us; who is always "abounding" in the work 
of the Lord ; who serves God on every day as 
well as the Sunday; who is more anxious to 
be right than to be rich; and who can ask 
God's blessing on the bitterest cup; when we 
meet such a one, we know that down in the 
clefts of the soul is Christ, the well-spring ! 

In a thousand ways will the inward foun- 
tain of Christian principle make itself visible. 
We see it in the merchant who gives Christ 
the key of his safe, and never soils it with a 
single dirty shilling. We see it in the states- 
man who cares more to win God's smile on 
his conscience than a reelection to office. We 
recognize it in the minister who is more 
greedy for souls than for salary. We see it in 
the young man who would rather endure a 
comrade's laugh than his Saviour's frown ; in 
the maiden w T hb obeys Christ sooner than 
fashion. I sometimes detect this well-spring 



88 HEART-LIFE. 

of cheerful piety in the patient mother, whose 
daily walk with God is a fount of holy influ- 
ence amid her household. I know of poor 
men's dwellings in which grows a plant of 
contentment that is an exotic rarely found in 
marble mansions. Its leaves are green and 
glossy; it is fed from the Well. 

In dying chambers we have often heard 
this spiritual fountain playing, and its murmur 
was as musical as the tinkle of a brook 

" In the leafy month of June." 

Perfect love had cast out fear. Peace 
reigned. Joys sparkled in the sunlight of 
God's countenance. There was a well there 
which death could not dry — the "well of 
water springing up into everlasting life." 

Bonar, the sweet singer of Scotland, has 
rhymed this thought into beautiful metre : 

" I heard the voice of Jesus say : 

* Behold, I freely give 
The living icater ; thirsty one ! 

Stoop down and drink, and live.' 
I came to Jesus, and I drank 

Of that life-giving stream. 
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, 

And now I live in him." 




OVEI\ THE L 



INE, 




EVER was there a time when 
it would be more appropriate 
to carve on the very walls of the 
sanctuary, and for every Christian to 
grave " on the palms of his hands," 
this divine admonition: "Be not conformed 
to this world." "Whosoever, therefore, will 
be a friend of the world, is the enemy of 
God." 

No snare is so subtle, constant and perilous 
to the follower of Christ as conformity to the 
world. Nothing sooner saps his spirituality ; 
nothing hinders a revival in the church more 
effectually. Conformity implies resemblance. 
And when a professed Christian begins to 
look like a worldling, and live like a worldling, 
how dwelleth the love of Christ in him? For 
there is a complete and irreconcilable antag- 



90 HEART-LIFE. 

onism between what the Bible calls "the 
world" and the service of Christ. 

The chief end of a Christian's life is to 
glorify God. Is this the chief end of life with 
the people of the world? Ask any one of 
them, and he will answer, "No ! I live to enjoy 
myself in promoting my interests, in gratify- 
ing my tastes, and in taking my comfort. I 
want to get all I can, and to get the most out 
of it." He " looks only at those things which 
are seen and temporal." God is ignored en- 
tirely, the soul is ignored, eternity is forgot- 
ten. The pleasures most relished are the 
pleasures of sin, for God is not in any one 
of them. The worldling commonly delights 
most in what a consistent Christian finds to 
be forbidden fruit on forbidden ground. That 
forbidden fruit is poison to the Christian. 

Bear in mind that every pare pleasure 
which an. unconverted heart can enjoy, such 
as the joys of home and of friendship, the 
love of letters or art, the sight of beauty, or 
the delight of relieving sorrow — all these the 
Christian can have and enjoy likewise. They 
are not sinful, and the child of God can par- 



OVEE THE LINE. 91 

take of theni with, a clear conscience. But 
just where a Bible-conscience tells him to 
stop, the license of the world begins. The 
Word of God draws a dividing line. Over 
that line lies the path of self-indulgence. 
Over that line lies self-pampering, frivolity, 
slavery to fashion. Over that line God is 
ignored and often defied ! Christ is wounded 
there and crucified afresh. Over that line 
the follower of Jesus has no business to go. 
It was over such a "stile" that Bunyan's Pil- 
grim looked wistfully, for the path was soft 
and skirted with flowers ; but when he stepped 
over, he soon found himself in the dungeons 
of Giant Despair. 

Over the line which separates pure piety 
from the world the Christian, if he goes at all, 
must go as a participant in the pleasures of 
the world, or as a protestant against them. If 
he goes to partake, he offends Christ ; if he 
goes to protest, he offends his ill-chosen asso- 
ciates. Christian ! if you ever attend a con- 
vivial party, a ball-room assembly, a theatre, 
or a gaming company, do you go as a partaker 
in the sport, or to make your protest against 



92 HEAKT-LIFE. 

such amusements ? If you go for the first ob- 
ject, you offend your Lord ; if for the second, 
you offend your company. They do not want 
you there. "We are quite sure that no bevy of 
merry-makers would be the happier over their 
cups, or their cards, or their cotillons, if all 
the elders and deacons of our Church were to 
come in suddenly among them. Brethren, 
"the world" don't want you in their giddy 
and godless pleasures, unless you are willing 
to go all lengths with them. And if you walk 
one mile with them over the line, they will 
"compel you to go with them twain" If your 
conscience yields the "coat," they will soon 
rob you of your " cloak also." 

Vanity Fair would have welcomed Christian 
and Faithful to their jovial town if the pil- 
grims had only been willing to doff their 
Puritan dress and "take a hand" with them 
in all their revelries. But because the godly 
men refused to be conformed to the fashions 
and follies of Vanity Fair, one of them was 
soon sent to the prison and the other to the 
stake. 

Where does the dividing line run between 



OVER THE LINE. 93 

true religion and the world? "We answer that 
it runs just where God's Word puts it ; and a 
conscience which is enlightened by the Word 
and by prayer does not commonly fail to dis- 
cover it. Where God is honored is the right 
side; where God is dishonored, or even 
ignored, is the wrong side. Where Christ 
would be likely to go if he were on earth, is 
the right side ; but where a Christian would 
be ashamed to have his Master find him, 
there he ought never to find himself. Where- 
ever a Christian can go, and conscientiously 
ask God's blessing on what he is doing, there 
let that Christian go. He is not likely to wan- 
der over the line while walking by this rule. 
And when a church-member can enter a play- 
house, -or into a dancing frolic, and honestly 
ask God's blessing on the amusements, and 
come away a better Christian for it, then let 
him go, but not before. When a Christian in- 
vokes the divine blessing on the bottle which 
he puts to his neighbor's lips, he had better 
look sharply whether there is* not a "ser- 
pent" and a "stinging adder" in the sparkling 
liquor. 



94 HEAKT-LIFE. 

Without going into further illustrations, we 
come to this fundamental principle, that what- 
ever of work or of recreation a Christian en- 
gages in to promote the health of his body or 
soul, and in which he can glorify Christ, lies 
on the safe side of the dividing line. The 
moment he crosses it to become the "friend 
of the world," he becomes the "enemy of 
God." 

But should not every good man be a 
"friend of the world"? "Was not the divine 
Jesus a friend of the world when he so loved 
it that he gave himself for its redemption? 
Did not Paul love the world when he endured 
hardship, humiliations and martyrdom to lead 
sinners to the cross? All! yes — very true; 
but what the Redeemer and his apostle were 
after was not sinners' sins, but sinners' souls. 
And they sought to save the world, not by 
conformity to it, but by transforming it to a 
higher and holier idelt of life. 

Nor is it by going over to the world that we 
can save the worldling. If we are to impress 
the world, we must live above the world; if 
we would save sinners, we must, in the same 



OVER THE LINE. 



95 



sense that Jesus was,. be "separate from sin- 
ners." The moment we go over the line to 
"curry favor" with the votaries of sin, we 
never reach them, and only run the risk of 
ruining ourselves. "Would to God that, in 
trying to draw the world into conformity to 
Christy we did not allow the world to drag us 
down into conformity with itself! 



~\A^ 




%)W. 





A Shot at the Decanter. 

HERE is a current story *that a 
Quaker once discovered a thief 
in his house ; and taking down his 
grandfather's old fowling-piece, he 
quietly said : " Friend, thee had bet- 
ter get out of the way, for I intend to fire this 
gun right where thee stands" "With the same 
considerate spirit we warn certain good people 
that they had better take the decanter off 
their table, for we intend to aim a Bible-truth 
right where that decanter stands. It is in the 
wrong place- It has no more business to be 
there at all than the thief had to be in. the 
honest Quaker's house. We are not surprised 
to find a decanter of alcoholic poison on the 
counter of a dram-shop, whose keeper is 
" licensed" to sell death by measure. But 
we are surprised to find it on the table or the 



A SHOT AT THE DECANTER. 97 

sideboard of one who professes to be guided 
by the spirit and teachings of God's Word. 
That bottle stands right in the range of the 
following inspired utterance of St. Paul: "It 
is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink tuine, 
nor any tiling whereby thy brother' stnmbleth" 
This text must either go out of the Christian's 
Bible, or the bottle go off the Christian's 
table. The text will not move, and the bottle 
must. 

The passage itself is so clear that it 'can 
hardly admit of a cavil or a doubt. It 
teaches the lofty and benevolent principle 
that abstinence from things that are necessa- 
rily hurtful to others, is a Christian expedi- 
ency that has the grip of a moral duty. 

This sounds, at first, like a very radical 
doctrine; but so conservative an expounder 
as Prof. Hodge, of Princeton, has defined the 
text as teaching that some things w T hich are 
not always wrong per se are to be given up 
for the sake of others. He says that the legal 
liberty of a good man is never to be exercised 
where moral evil will inevitably flow from it. 
We are never to put stumbling-blocks in the 

Heart-life. 7 



98 HEAET-LIFE. 

way of others. Good men are bound to sacri- 
fice anything and everything that is counter to 
the glory of God, and destructive of the best 
interests of humanity. 

It would be easy to prove unanswerably 
that alcoholic beverages are injurious to those 
who use them. The famous athlete, Tom 
Sayers, was once asked by a gentleman: 
"Well, Thomas, I suppose that when you are 
training, you use plenty of beefsteaks, and 
London porter, and pale ale?" 

The boxer replied : " In my time I have 
drunk more than was good for me ; but when 
I have business to do, there's nothing like 
ivater and the dumb-bells." After retiring 
from "business," he took to drink and died a 
sot. Cold water made him a Samson; alco- 
hol laid him in his grave. As a matter of 
personal health and long life, "it is good not 
to drink wine;" as an example to others, total 
abstinence is a Christian virtue. 

The inherent wrong of using intoxicating 
drinks is two-fold : 

1. It exposes to danger the man who tam- 
pers with it; for no man was ever positively 



A SHOT AT THE DECANTER. 99 

assured by his Creator that he could play 
with the " adder " that lies coiled in a wine- 
cup without being stung by it. 

2. It puts a stumbling-block in the way of 
him whom we are commanded to love as our- 
selves. 

We lay down, then, the proposition, that no 
man has a moral rigid to do anything the 
influence of which is certainly and inevitably 
hurtful to his neighbor. I have a legal right 
to do many things which, as a Christian, I 
cannot do. I have a* legal right to take 
arsenic, or swallow strychnine ; but I have no 
moral right to commit this self-destruction. 
I have a legal right to attend the theatre. 
No policeman stands at the door to exclude 
me, or dares to eject me while my conduct is 
orderly and becoming. But I have no moral 
right to go there; not merely because I may 
see and hear much that may soil my memory 
for days and months, but because that whole 
garnished and glittering establishment, with 
its sensuous attractions, is to many a young 
person the yawning maelstrom of perdition. 
The dollar which I gave at the box office is 



100 HEART-LIFE. 

my contribution toward sustaining an estab- 
lishment whose dark foundations rest on the 
murdered souls of thousands of my fellow- 
men. Their blood stains its walls, and from 
that "pit" they have gone down to another 
pit where no sounds of mirth ever come. 
Now, I ask, what right have I to enter a place 
where the tragedies that are played off before 
me by painted women and dissolute men are 
as nothing to the tragedies of lost souls that 
are enacted in some parts of that house every 
night? "What right have I to give my money 
and my presence to sustain that moral slaugh- 
ter-house, and, by walking into the theatre 
myself, to aid in decoying others to follow 
me? 

Now, on the same principle (not of self- 
preservation merely, but of avoiding what is 
dangerous to others) what right have I to 
sustain those fountain-heads of death from 
which the drink-poison is sold ? What right 
have I to advocate their license, to patronize 
the traffic, or even in any way to abet the 
whole system of drinking alcoholic stimulants 
at home or abroad? If a glass of wine on 



A SHOT AT THE DECANTER. 101 

my table will entrap some young man, or 
some one who is inclined to stimulants into 
dissipation, then am I thoughtlessly setting a 
trap for his life. I am his tempter. I give 
the usage my sanction, and to him the direct 
inducement to partake of the bottled demon 
that sparkles so seductively before him. If 
the contents of that sparkling glass make my 
brother to stumble, he stumbles over me. If 
he goes away from my table and commits 
some outrage under the effects of that stimu- 
lant, I am, to a certain degree, guilty of that 
outrage. I have a partnership in every blow 
he strikes, or in every oath he may utter, or 
in every bitter wound he may inflict on the 
hearts of those he loves, while under the spell 
of my glass of "Cognac" or "Burgundy." I 
gave him the incentive to do what otherwise 
he might have left undone. The man who 
puts the bottle to his neighbor's lips is ac- 
countable for what comes from those lips 
under the influence of the dram, and is ac- 
countable, too, for every outrage that the 
maddened victim of the cup may perpetrate 
during his temporary insanity. 



102 HEART-LIFE. 

In this view of the question, is it too much, 
to ask of every professed Christian, and every 
lover of his kind, that they will wholly abstain 
from everything that can intoxicate? For 
the sake of your children, do it; for the sake 
of a brother, a husband, a friend; for the 
sake of those who will pl^ad your example; 
for the sake of frail tempted ones who cannot 
say, No ! for your fellow-traveller's sake to 
God's bar and to the eternal world, touch not 
the bottled devil, under whose shining scales 
damnation hides its adder-sting ! 

It is old-fashioned total abstinence that we 
are pleading for. "We ask it, as Paul did, for 
the sake of those who "stumble." O those 
stumblers! those stumblers! "We dare not 
speak of them. It would touch many of us 
too tenderly. It would reveal too many 
wrecks — wrecks that angels have wept over. 
It would open tombs whose charitable green 
turf hides out of sight what many a survivor 
would love to have forgotten. It would recall 
to me many a college friend who went down 
at mid-day into blackness of darkness. 

And to-day I see this social curse coming 



A SHOT AT THE DECANTEK. 103 

back into our houses, into our streets, into our 
daily usages of life, with redoubled power. 
"Would that every parent were a " prohibitory 
law" to his family ! Would that every pulpit 
and every platform would thunder forth the 
old warning cry: "Look not on the wine when 
it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, 
for at the last it biteth like a serpent and 
stingeth like an adder." At the last I at the 
last ! But oh! who can tell when that " last" 
shall ever end? When will the victim's last 
groan be heard? When will the last horror 
seize upon his wretched soul ? 






ft Teacher in God's School. 

OD keeps a school for his children 
here on earth ; and one of his best 
teachers is named Disappointment. 
He is a rough teacher; severe in 
tone and harsh in his handling, 
sometimes, but his tuition is worth all it costs 
us. We do not pretend to be a very apt 
learner, but many of our best lessons through 
life have been taught us by that same stern 
old schoolmaster, Disappointment. 

'One lesson we learned was, not to be sel- 
fish, or imagine that this world was all made 
for us. If it had been, the sun would have 
shone just when our hay needed curing, and 
the rains would have fallen only when our 
garden thirsted for water. But we found that 
God ordered things to please himself, and not 
us. And when our schemes were broken up, 



A TEACHER IN GOD'S SCHOOL. 105 

and our journey spoiled by the storm, the 
stern schoolmaster said : " The world was not 
made for you alone. Do not be selfish. Your 
loss is another's gain. The rain that spoils 
- our hay makes your neighbor's corn grow 
the faster. The fall in wheat that cuts down 
your profits will help the poor widow in yon- 
der cottage to buy bread for her hungry little 
mouths, next winter. The working Christian 
that removed from your church, and almost 
broke your heart, will make some other pas- 
tor's vineyard glad. Your loss is another 
man's gain. Don't be selfish." 

On a grand scale, sometimes, this lesson is 
taught. When a certain ambitious self-seeker 
once clutched at the dominion of all Europe, 
stern Disappointment met him in his path of 
invasion, flung a Russian snow-storm in his 
face, and out of the tiny snow-flakes wove a 
white shroud to wrap the flower of French 
chivalry. The lesson that the proud usurper 
would not leam at Aspern and Eylau was 
taught him hi the agonies of Borodino, and in 
ghastly blood-prints on the frozen banks of 
the Beresina. His successor, the third Na- 



106 HEABT-LIFE. 

poleon, lias also "been taught, lately, the same 
lesson : " All Europe does not belong to you." 
So, too, have we, in the defeat of our humbler 
plans of self-seeking, been made to hear the 
sharp teacher say: "Do not be selfish. God 
did not make this world just for you. Other 
people have rights as well as yourself." This 
lesson was worth all it cost us. 

A second lesson which Disappointment has 
taught us is, that our losses are not only gains, 
sometimes, to others, but are very often the 
richest gains to ourselves. In our short- 
sighted ignorance, we had " devised a way," 
and set our hearts upon it. Had we been 
allowed to pursue it, we must have been led 
by it to ruin. The railway train we were dis- 
appointed in not reaching was dashed into 
fragments down an embankment ; the steamer 
that we were too late for was burned to a 
wreck. At the moment, we scolded bitterly; 
but, by-and-by, we found out that God could 
not have sent a more fatal judgment upon us 
than simply to have let us have our own way. 
That seemed right unto us, but the end 
thereof was death. 



A TEACHER IN GOD'S SCHOOL. 107 

A hundred illustrations of this truth occur 
to us. A " first honor " in college has turned 
more than one young man's head ; the disap- 
pointment of losing it has goaded on another 
to higher distinctions than he had lost. More 
than one covetous merchant has been so 
thwarted in his enterprises for money-making 
that he has been enraged with mortification. 
But his Heavenly Father knew the dangers 
of success to him, and saved him from sorer 
sorrows. A young lawyer, heart-broken by 
the early death of the sweet girl he loved, 
turns away for solace to sacred studies and 
doing good. He becomes a successful winner 
of souls in Christ's ministry. The pecuniary 
crash of 1857 threw thousands into bank- 
ruptcy ; but many a man was made richer in 
the priceless treasure of a Christian hope. 

A dark door did Disappointment open that 
year, but it led thousands into the pathway to 
heaven. A dark doorway, too, did Death 

open to my friend B and his young wife, 

when their child went from them so suddenly ; 
but their hearts went after the departed lamb 
up to the Divine Shepherd. The death of 



108 HEAKT-LIFE. 

their darling was the means of their souls' 
conversion. During our twenty-five years' min- 
istry we have known more souls converted or 
especially sanctified through the loss of little 
children than from any other providential dis- 
cipline. 

The record-book of every Christian's life 
has some pages in it which were written at 
the bidding -of that severe teacher, Disap- 
pointment. Tears may have blotted and 
blurred the page at the time. But as we turn 
over to that page now, and read it in the 
light of experience, we can write beneath it : 
" Thank God for those losses ! they were my 
everlasting gain. Thank God for those be- 
reavements! they have saved my soul from 
being bereaved of heaven. All things work 
together for good to them that love God; 
to them who are the called according to his 
purpose." 

My friend, if you and I ever reach our 
Father's house, we shall look back and see 
that the sharp-voiced, rough-visaged teacher, 
Disappointment, was one of the best guides 
to train us for it. He gave us hard lessons. 



A TEACHER IN GOD'S SCHOOL. 109 

He often used tlie rod. He often led us into 
thorny paths. He sometimes stripped off a 
load of luxuries ; but that only made us travel 
the freer and the faster on our heavenward 
way. He sometimes led us down into the 
valley of the death-shadow; but never did 
the promises read so sweetly as when spelled 
out by the eye of faith in that very valley. 
Nowhere did he lead us so often, or teach us 
such sacred lessons, as at the cross of Christ. 
Dear, old, rough-handed teacher! We will 
build a monument to thee yet, and crown it 
with garlands, and inscribe on it: Blessed be 
the memory of Disappointment. 






YMNS OF THE pROSS. 

F all the hymns of the cross the 
"Rock of Ages" may well be styled 
the masterpiece. Perhaps the sec- 
ond place should be given to those 
grand lines of Isaac "Watts which 

we once heard . Mr. Spurgeon read in tones 

as sonorous as a trumpet — 

' 'When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of glory died, 
My richest gain I count but loss 

And pour contempt on all my pride." 

Close beside "Watts' glorious hymn belong 
those tender strains which Cowper sung in one 
of his inspired hours of joy, when the cloud 
of melancholy lifted from his soul — 

" There is a fountain filled with blood." 

This hymn is saturated with grateful love for 
the " dear dying Lamb." Its author glories 



HYMNS OF THE CROSS. Ill 

only in the Cross of Christ, and lifts with 
trembling hand his crown of adoration and 
places it above the crown of thorns on Jesus' 
brow. Although Cowper was immeasurably 
the greatest living poet then in Britain, he 
confesses that his is but a "poor lisping, stam- 
mering tongue" to sing the song of redeem- 
ing love. He promises to himself " a nobler, 
sweeter song" wlien he gets his well-tuned 
harp in the grand oratorio of heaven. 

To these three hymns of redemption which 
sprang from the devout souls of Toplady, 
Watts, and Cowper, America has contributed 
a fourth which is worthy to stand in. this 
matchless quartette. It is, by far, the most 
precious contribution which American genius 
has yet made to the hymnology of the Chris- 
tian church. The author of it was a native 
of "Little Compton" in little Rhode Island — 
and was graduated from old Tale in 1830. 
Immediately after leaving college he came to 
New York, and spent a few hours each day in 
teaching young ladies in a school which stood 
in the then fashionable quarter of Fulton- 
street, behind St. Paul's church. In Decern- 



112 HEART-LIFE. 

ber of that year (1830) — just forty years ago, 
he sat down one day in his room, and wrote 
in his pocket memorandum-book four simple 
verses, which he says " were born of my own 
soul" and were not written to be seen by 
another human eye. He wrote then rapidly, 
and with his eyes swimming in tears. The 
first verse reads thus : 

" My faith, looks up to Thee, 
Thou Lamb of Calvary, 
Saviour divine ! 
Now hear me while I pray : 
Take all my guilt away ; 
Oh let me from this day 
Be wholly thine !" 

He put the memorandum-book into his 
pocket, and carried it there for two whole 
years— little dreaming that he was carrying 
about with him his own passport to immor- 
tality. One day Dr. Lowell Mason met him 
in the streets of Boston, and asked him to 
furnish some hymns for the volume of " Spir- 
itual Songs" which he (Dr. Mason) and Dr. 
Thomas Hastings were about to publish. The 
young college graduate drew from his pocket 
the lines— 



HYMNS OF THE CROSS. 113 

"My faith looks up to Thee." 

Dr. Mason went home, and catching a similar 
inspiration to that of the author of the lines, 
composed for them that beautiful tune of 
"Olivet," to which the hymn is wedded unto 
this day. Dr. Mason met the author a few 
days afterwards and said to him propheti- 
cally, " Mr. Palmer, you may live many years, 
and do many good things, but I think that 
you will be best known to posterity as the 
author of this hymn." The prediction is ful- 
filled. The man who sang this sweet song of 
Calvary is still living, and has composed many 
tender and beautiful poems and discourses ; 
but his devout mind jlotvered oat in one match- 
less lily whose rich odors have filled the courts 
of our God with fragrance. 

How many a penitent, while reading or 
singing that hymn, has looked up to Calvary's 
cross and found peace in believing ! In how 
many a prayer-meeting has it been sung 
through tears of holy gratitude ! To how 
many a sick chamber and dying bed has it 
come like a strain from that heavenly land 
which was already in full view ! The poetry 

Heart -life. 8 



114 HEABT-LIFE. 

of the hymn is as perfect as its theology. In 
its structure it closely resembles the " Rock of 
Ages." It 'begins in penitence; it ends in 
praise. It begins in heart-broken sorrow, and 
concludes with the most glorious assurance of 
hope. 

In the first verse the . suppliant is repre- 
sented as bowing before the crucified Saviour, 
and looking up to him, and to him only. He 
sees none but Jesus. His cry is — 

" Take all my guilt away !" 

His aspiration is — 

' ' Oh, let nie from this day, 
Be wholly thine." 

Before that cross the praying soul obtains 
strength, and a pure, warm, and changeless 
love for his Redeemer. He is filled with a 
"living fire." He is the new man in Christ 
Jesus. 

But as he looks forward, he foresees a "dark 
maze" of trial before him, overhung with 
clouds of grief that lower black and terrible, 
and sometimes weep great showers of tears. 
Surrounded with these discouraging clouds of 



HYMNS OF THE CROSS. 115 

confusion and temptation he shouts out like 
one lost in the dark — 

' ' Be Thou my guide ! 
Bid darkness turn to day, 
Wipe sorrow's tear away, 
Nor let me ever stray 
From Thee aside !" 

Before him lies still one more valley darker 
than any passed before. It is that vale in 
which " ends life's transient dream." Through 
it rolls death's cold and sullen stream ! He 
already imagines himself in the swellings of 
Jordan. And as the floods go over him, he 
lifts his last victorious voice of sublime trust — 

* ' Blest Saviour ! then in love 
Fear and distrust remove ; 
Oh, bear me safe above, 
A ransomed soul!" 

Such is the grandest of American hymns. 
Is it not the grandest of this century ? And 
if our readers wish to know, and to thank its 
modest author, they have but to go into the 
"Bible House" in New York, and take by the 
hand our genial and beloved friend Dr. Bay 
Palmer, 





Morning- Cloud Religion. 

HAVE stood in a Swiss valley 
at the time of sunrise, and seen 
tlie mountain-peak above me crowned 
with a beautiful white coronal. As 
the first sunlight strikes it, the cloud 
of morning incense is tipped with rosy fire. 
One moment it is fleecy white. Then it is 
glowing pink — then burnished gold like the 
robe of the seraphim. Then — gone for ever ! 
Before we could call out our companions to 
behold the beautiful spectacle, the glory-cloud 
was dissolved into empty air, and the icy moun- 
tain-top stood out sharp and bare against the 
eastern sky. 

Turning from the rocky peaks of jasper 
towards the valley about us, lo ! the grass is 
a floor of diamonds. The dewdrops are all 



MORNING-CLOUD RELIGION. 117 

as jewels. On the hedges hang the necklaces 
of pearl — over the fields are sown the living 
sapphires. We go in reluctantly to our morn- 
ing meal; we come out again, and where is 
the jewelry? Gone for ever in the hot rays 
of the conquering sun. The mountain-top is 
bare; the earth is dry. The "morning cloud 
and the early dew" are both among the things 
that were. Opening our Bible and turning to 
the book of Hose a, we find these very words 
employed to describe a certain sort of showy 
but short-lived religion. Hosea 6 : 4. 

As nearly every church may contain more 
or less members whose religion is no more 
real and abiding than the vapor on the moun- 
tain-top, it is worth while to inquire the causes, 
and the cure, of transient piety. May we not 
find in one or all of the three following rea- 
sons the answer to this inquiry ? 

1. The convicted soul, in its first awaken- 
ing, was not brought to a genuine loathing 
and abandonment of known sin. In other 
words, there was no Bible-repentance. The 
impressions of many awakened persons are 
merely terror. They feel the danger of sin, 



118 HEART-LIFE. 

but not its abominable filthiness. They quake 
at the sight of God as a ptLnisber, but do not 
quake at their own guiltiness. They see that 
there is a hell that follows after their sins, but 
do not see that there is a hell too in their 
sins. Of course such persons do not abandon 
sin thoroughly, or seek after a radical change 
of heart. And without "grief and hatred of 
sin" there can be no Bible-repentance. A 
religion that began in a mere fit of terror is 
likely to end as it began. For a man who 
has not abandoned his favorite sins, his pet- 
ted and his profitable sins, cannot claim to be 
a genuine, enduring Christian. 

2. The awakened soul when troubled by 
legal terrors did not betake itself to Christ. 
Consciously diseased, it compounded quack 
remedies for itself. Christ was not sought after, 
believed on, and heartily embraced. There 
was no loye of Jesus awakened as a master- 
passion with the man. Had the soul reached 
Christ, it had been safe. Belieyers hold to 
the cross, fecause the cross holds them. 

3. A third cause of the morning-cloud reli- 
gion is the attempt to liye on promises instead 



MORNING-CLOUD RELIGION. 119 

of performances. The man trusts in resolu- 
tions, and never reaches actual downright do- 
ing of duty. He means to be — hopes to be — 
promises to be actively obedient to Christ — 
but never does one deed or makes one sacri- 
fice for him. On the day when he joins the 
church, he is fluent in promises for his future 
life. He will serve God to-morrow. The 
morrow comes and goes, and sees not one 
stroke of thorough service done, not one sin 
crucified, not a single labor of charity under- 
taken. Before a week has rolled by, the 
man's religion has begun to evaporate, and in 
a year there is nothing left of him but a name 
on the church register. 

How many a brilliant beginning have we 
seen that so soon ended in nothingness ! For 
a brief time the "cloud" was beautiful. As 
it hung in prominence before our eyes, the 
rays of hope painted it with a ruddy glow. 
Christian friends hailed it as a cloud of prom- 
ise. Praying souls — who had longed for just 
such appearances of piety in the man — grew 
thankful that their prayers were receiving a 
fulfilment. 



120 HEART-LIFE. 

But presently it grew thinner. It began to 
scatter into looseness; tlien into emptiness. 
It was not a shower-cloud of spiritual bless- 
ings, like the life of an Oberlin, a Baikes, a 
Haldane, a "Whitefield, or a Harlan Page. 
But only vapor ! Beautiful vapor for a litfle 
time, and then vanishing away ! 

In every church there may be just such 
professors. They are not backsliders, for they 
never had any genuine grace to lapse from. 
Are they hypocrites ? Perhaps not ; for that 
is a harsh word as generally understood, im- 
plying cold-blooded deception and falsehood. 
These unhappy persons never intended to de- 
ceive others; they were simply deceived in 
themselves. They entered the church from 
an entirely mistaken view of their own condi- 
tion. Perhaps they were the subjects — or 
rather the victims — of a spurious religious ex- 
citement; or, under the foolish persuasion of 
injudicious friends, were hurried into church 
engagements. Their vows are no longer re- 
garded. Their professions no longer deceive. 
A galling yoke of bondage is their church- 
membership now, when it ought to be the 



MORNING-CLOUD RELIGION. 121 

symboL and the seal of a happy wedded union 
to Jesus Christ. 

What is the duty of such persons? To 
leave the church at once ? I do not think so. 
Shall they abandon the table of the Lord? 
I think not. Let them rather seek anew the 
Lord of the table. Let them go now to Christ 
with genuine contrition for their sins, and 
honest acknowledgment of their sad mistake. 
"Wiser from the bitter experience of their own 
failures, let them begin afresh and begin aright. 
We never knew a false professor saved by 
leaving the church. But we have known of 
scores who were saved in it by timely repent- 
ance and faith in Christ. Candid reader ! if 
you have a false hope, throw it away and seek 
a better. So shall your "goodness" be not 
merely a morning vapor, but a cloud of bless- 
ings through life's lbng useful day, and at 
sunset it shall burn with the golden glories 
reflected from the better world. 





CONVERTED 



}&A 



N, 



N a certain evening in the olden 
times, a man of resolute look was 
sitting by the fire, amid a group 
of talkers, in a high priest's hall. 
During that day his Master had 
startled him by saying to him : " When thou art 
converted, strengthen thy brethren." "Was he 
not already a converted man? "Was he not 
already a disciple of Jesus ? The remark was 
well calculated to surprise, and to give him 
pain. 

Perhaps revolving the startling words in his 
mind, the man sits by the fire — waiting to be 
"sifted." Satan, the sifter, sees him there, 
and steals in to sift him. He comes through 
the lips of an impertinent serving-maid. 



THE EE-CONVERTED MAN. 123 

"Thou wast also with. Jesus of Galilee/' 
sneers the garrulous girl. What an oppor- 
tunity for the boastful Peter to stand up for 
Jesus ! "With craven tone, the he sticking in 
his throat, he stammers out: "I know not 
what thou sayest." He goes out into the 
porch, and again the sifter sifts him. How 
the wheat is running away, and leaving the 
empty chaff! 

In the porch another maid is loitering, who 
no sooner sees him than she sets the rabble 
upon him by exclaiming: "This fellow was 
also with Jesus of Nazareth." The mob take 
up the jeer, and cry out : " Surely thou art 
also one of them ; thy brogue bewrayeth thee." 
This is too much for the poor, irritated, 
hounded disciple — the man who chafed so 
under a taunt — and, with swaggering oath, he 
flings back the jeer: "I know not the man." 

" All, Peter, methinks thou needest a con- 
version now! What shall keep thee from 
going clear over to the ranks of the perse- 
cutors of that Man of Sorrows in the judg- 
ment hall?" Stop. Judge him not too 
harshly. The difference between a bent tree 



124 HEABT-LIFE. 

and a broken tree is, that one springs back to 
its place when the pressure is removed, but 
the other never rises from the dust. Peter's 
is a bent faith, not a broken ; for no sooner 
does the cock-crow smite upon his ear than in 
a moment his cowed and brow-beaten loyalty 
to his Master leaps up and asserts its pres- 
ence in an honest outgush of blinding tears. 
Out into the solitudes of the garden he goeth, 
not to hide his sin with the rope of the sui- 
cide, but to be re-converted ; to turn back 
again, with genuine contrition, to that Saviour 
whom he had wronged and denied; to do 
once more his first works, and give afresh his 
heart to Jesus. And from that garden, whose 
deep shadows made a fit "closet" for his se- 
cret outbreak of penitential grief, the weeping 
man comes out a humbler, wiser, better, and 
braver man than he had ever been before. 
That baptism of tears was a needed baptism 
for his high apostleship. Better fitted to sym- 
pathize with the tempted; better fitted to 
warn the presumptuous ; better calculated to 
deal tenderly with the erring, and every way 
better able to "strengthen the brethren' 1 



THE EE-CONVEETED MAN. 125 

must the disciple have been for his melan- 
choly lapse, and for his merciful re-conver- 
sion. 

But what is re-conversion ? It is certainly 
not regeneration. The Bible gives no hint of 
a second, or a third, or a fourth new birth of 
the soul. We recognize no such thing in 
our spiritual experience. Re-conversion is not 
the awakening of a sinner for the second 
time. 

It is simply the return to God and to duty 
of a backsliding believer. Peter's religious 
character was not wholly swept from him in 
that sad, shameful hour of his denial of the 
Redeemer. Nor does any true Christian lose 
his faith entirely during his seasons of spirit- 
ual declension. He is not a happy man, nor 
a healthy man, nor a heaven-honored man ; 
but he is alive. As the benumbed Alpine 
traveller, who has foundered among the swirl- 
ing snow-drifts, soon " comes to " again, when 
laid before the fire of the St. Bernard Hos- 
pice, so a frozen backslider may thaw out and 
recover under the warmth of Christ's restoring 
grace. It is a terrible experiment to try ; a 



126 HEART-LIFE. 

terrible risk to run. Let no man tempt God's 
love by trying the perilous step. Peter would 
probably have ended just where Judas ended, 
had not one been a true Christian and the 
other an impostor. Christ prayed for Peter 
that his "faith might not fail" utterly; and 
but for that timely intercession he could not 
have come forth from that garden a re-con- 
verted man. 

The process through which Peter passed, 
during his recovery, was partially similar to 
the process of his first conversion. There 
must have been repentance deep and sincere. 
There must have faith in Jesus exercised 
anew. The sorrows of his contrition, too, 
were aggravated by the recollection of his 
first state of grace, and of his late disgraceful 
fall. Now, as conversion is made up of re- 
pentance, faith, and new obedience to God, &o 
Peter's recovery was, in every sense, a re-con- 
version. It* was a turning unto God ; and 
differed from a first conversion in only two 
things, namely : the point set out from was a 
different point, and the distance travelled over 
was vastly less. 



THE RE-CONVERTED MAN. 127 

"Who the reader of this paragraph may be, 
we do not know; but he must be a remarka- 
ble Christian if he never needed a re-conver- 
sion. Every act of disloyalty to Christ, every 
disgraceful lapse into sin, should call forth 
Peter's tears and Peter's penitence. Even 
without looking back for some specific fla- 
grant offence against Christian consistency, it 
will do you no harm, my professing friend, to 
"repent and do first works" afresh. If you 
have grown cold in heart and indolent in 
duty, if prayer is a penanco, and the Lord's 
table an irksome formality, then you need a 
new conversion. If, after a searching scru- 
tiny, you are not satisfied with your present 
hope, give it up. By all means give it up, and 
seek a better. Nothing would sooner bring a 
genuine revival into our churches than for 
lukewarm, inconsistent members to come for- 
ward by platoons and abandon the worthless 
hope of bygone days, and, with thorough re- 
pentance, to dig down deep and lay anew 
their foundation on the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Multitudes of church members, we fear, are 
barely living on the memory of the religious 



128 



HEART-LIFE 



experiences of ten or twenty years ago. John 
"Wesley would call sucli a state a falling away 
from grace. John Owen would call it a spir- 
itual declension. But both would agree in 
the remedy needed, and both would agree in 
the exhortation with which we close : " Re- 
member, therefore, from whence thou art 
fallen, and repent and do the first works ! " 





The- Spices in God's Garde 



N, 




HE true believer's heart is the 
"King's garden." It is described 
in the "Canticles" as a "garden en- 
closed." The Orientals were accus- 
tomed to fence in their gardens with 
hedges of prickly shrubs. Sometimes a stone 
wall was built, as in the case of the hallowed 
enclosure around Gethsemane. Outside the 
garden was often a barren waste. So is the 
believer's heart kept apart from a world lying 
in wickedness. " Come out, and be ye sepa- 
rate," saith the Lord Almighty. 

"What are the products of this heart-gar- 
den ? The singer of Solomon's Song tells us 
that they are "pleasant fruits, with all trees 
of frankincense, and myrrh, and aloes, with 



Hcait-Lifc. 



9 



130 HEABT-LIFE. 

all the chief spices." These spices are the 
graces of a Christian's soul. As spices were 
not native to the Oriental garden, but were 
planted there, and required careful cultiva- 
tion, so the fragrant graces of Christian char- 
acter are not natural to the human heart. 
They do not spring spontaneously in any man 
before conversion. They are the blessed and 
beautiful results of regeneration. "What a 
vast deal of watching and watering do they 
require ! "What constant need there is of 
that remarkable prayer: "Awake, O north 
wind, and come, thou south! Bloiv upon my 
garden, that the spices titer eof may flow out!" 

Look at the meaning of this prayer a mo- 
ment. Its root is found in the fact that, as 
delicious odors may lie latent in a spice-tree, 
so graces may lie unexercised and undevel- 
oped in a Christian's heart. There is many a 
plant of profession ; but from the cumbei;er of 
the ground there breathes forth no fragrance 
of holy affections or of godly deeds. 

As long as any member of Christ's church 
lives a hollow life of mere profession ; as long 
as he aims to please himself and not his 



THE SPICES IN GOD'S GARDEN. 131 

Saviour; as long as he is grasping, and self- 
seeking, and self-indulgent, and covetous, and 
a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God ; 
so long the professed cinnamon bush is not 
a whit better than the Canada thistle. A 
church full of such professors, whether they 
swear by the "Westminster Confession or by 
the Thirty-nine Articles, is only a batch of 
weeds. 

But even in genuine Christians there are 
latent graces which require to be drawn forth. 
And this prayer is for the coming of a "north 
wind" and of a "south wind," that the fra- 
grance of the soul's spices may flow out. 
Anything rather than a scentless, formal, fruit- 
less religion. 

Let the north wind come, even though it be 
a cutting wind of conviction ! Christians need 
to be convicted of sin as much as impenitent 
sinners. Peter was under conviction of sin 
when he went out into the garden to weep bit- 
terly. Perhaps the Apostle Paul felt a terri- 
ble uprising of the "old Adam" when he wrote 
that tearful seventh chapter to the Romans. 
Dr. Beecher once told me that one of the 



132 HEART-LIFE. 

most tremendous seasons of awakening lie 
ever knew was in a theological seminary. 
The "north wind" of the Spirit's power was 
so keenly felt that students for the minis- 
try gave up their "hopes/ 9 cried for mercy, 
and dug down deeper for better foundations 
to rest on ! The most powerful revivals in 
churches are those which bring professing 
Christians to repentance and tears, and to the 
cutting off of "right hand 59 sins. Awake! 
O north wind of conviction, and blow upon 
our dull, odorless hearts, that the spices of 
penitence may flow out. 

Sometimes God sends severe blasts of trial 
upon his children to develop their graces. 
Just as torches burn most brightly when 
swung violently to and fro; just as the juniper 
plant smells sweetest when flung into the 
flames; so the richest qualities of a Christian 
often come out under the north wind of suf- 
fering and adversity. Bruised hearts often 
emit the fragrance that God loveth to smell. 
Almost every true believers experience con- 
tains the record of trials which were sent for 
the purpose of shaking the spice-tree. 



THE SPICES IN GOD'S GARDEN. 133 

"Who bears a cross prays oft and well ; 
Bruised herbs send forth the sweetest smell ; 
Were plants ne'er tossed by stormy wind, 
The fragrant spices who would find? ' 

Trials are of no profit unless improved. 
"We need the Spirit's work at no time more 
than in our hours of trial. A graceless heart 
is none the better after affliction. The same 
wind blows on the thistle-bush and on the 
spice-tree ; but it is only one of them which 
gives out rich odors. Awake, O north wind, 
and come thou south! Blow upon my heart, 
that the perfumes of sweet graces may flow 
out! 

There are two winds mentioned in this 
beautiful prayer. God may send either or 
both, as seemeth him good. He may send 
the north wind of conviction, to bring us to 
repentance, or he may send the south wind of 
love, to melt us into gratitude and holy joy. 
If we often require the sharp blasts of trial 
to develop our graces, do we not also need 
the warm south breezes of his mercy? Do 
we not need the new of Christ's pres- 

ence in our hearts and the joys of the Holy 



134 HEART-LIFE. 

Ghost? Do we not need to be melted, yea, to 
be overpowered by the love of Jesus ? "When 
I look into my own scanty little heart-garden, 
when I go into the prayer-meetings of my 
flock, and when I think how feeble are the 
spiritual influences' we are shedding out upon 
the world, I am ready to cry out: "Awake, 
O north wind of the convicting Spirit ! Come, 
O south wind of melting, subduing love, and 
blow upon these odorless plants ! " 

Every genuine revival of religion has a 
divine side and a human side. Every such re- 
vival is the gift of God ; yet it is also the work 
of free agents — the quickened activity of good 
men and women. "When the winds blow upon 
the cinnamon-bushes, it is from the bushes 
themselves that the odors flow out. The soft- 
est of zephyrs cannot draw fragrance from a 
pigweed. Faith is the gift of God; but it is 
also your act and mine. Love is kindled by 
contact with Christ ; but we must come up 
close to him. The Holy Spirit may waft 
odors from a true Christian life; but the 
Christian mast do the living. Dead trees yield 
no spices. What was the secret of the sue- 



THE SPICES IN GOD'S GARDEN. 135 

cess and tremendous power of the apostolic 
church ? Every tree was a hearing tree. Paul 
in his pulpit, Lydia in her cloth-store, Dorcas 
with her needle, John amid his flock at Ephe- 
sus — each and all were " always abounding in 
the work of the Lord." 

Brethren! how shall our spiritual gardens 
attain to such beauty and fragrance ? There 
are three pithy answers. 

Let each one look well to the tillage of his 
own or her own heart. The measure of a 
Christian's power is the measure of that 
Christian's piety. Grace must be in the soul 
before it can come out of the soul. 

Be the Christian everyivhere and always. 
When Jacob came into his father's presence, 
the odor of the barley-ground and the vine- 
yard was in his garments. It was the " smell 
of the field which God had blessed." So, 
wherever we go, let us carry the Spirit of 
Christ within us. Then the spices will flow 
out. 

Let us cry fervently and frequently and im- 
portunately for the breath of the Holy Spirit. 
With one voice let us cry: "Awake, O north 



136 



HEAKT-LIFE. 



wind, and come, thou south! Blow upon our 
garden!" Then shall there be a shaking 
down of fruit from the branches, and the out- 
flow of the sweet spices shall fill and perfume 
the atmosphere in which we dwell. 






Making the Iron Swim. 

LAS, master, for it was bor- 
rowed!" exclaimed one of the 
sons of the prophets beside the 
river Jordan, when his axe-head 
flew off, and sunk in the turbid 
stream. And Elisha said to him, " Where fell 
it ?" The young student showed him the spot. 
Whereupon the man of God broke off a stick 
and cast it into the stream, and lo ! " the iron 
did swim /" The student put forth his hand 
and took it up, and went on w T ith his work to 
hew down timber for a "Log College," to be 
occupied by the sons of the prophets. 

Here was a direct interposition of the divine 
power. The honor of a company of good men 
was at stake : a loss had been met with : God 



138 HEART-LIFE. 

repaired the loss in a miraculous manner. 
God, who is the author of all law in nature, 
acted directly on that bit of iron, and made it 
rise up from the bottom of the stream. It was 
just such a special display of the divine power 
as that which sent the ravens to feed the fam- 
ished prophet Elijah, and at another time made 
a poor widow's barrel of meal and cruse of oil 
hold out. 

These were very unlikely things to happen ; 
but God constantly does unlikely things to 
reward the faith of his children. Elisha's 
heavenly Father is our Father. He is the 
Father of every faithful minister of the word, 
of every toiling missionary, of every true 
philanthropist who is struggling to turn the 
darkness into day, of every working Christian, 
and of every poor widow or orphan in his 
huge earthly household. He still fills pov- 
erty's empty cruse. He still makes the iron 
swim ! 

Yonder, at Ashley Down, lives George Mtil- 
ler, the noble, godly-minded superintendent of 
the famous " Orphan House," which shelters 
and educates hundreds of poor children every 



MAKING THE IRON SWIM. 139 

year. George Miiller began that vast work 
of love in simple faith. He goes on with his 
labor of love, and prays. God puts it into 
the hearts of liberal men to send him monev, 
and Miiller has already received and expended 
over two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. 
Faith does its duty, and God makes the iron 
swim. 

Sometimes the Lord transmutes the hardest 
outbreaks of human wrath into instruments of 
mercy. That royal scoffer, Charles II., locked 
up John Bunyan in Bedford jail for twelve 
years. That padlock kept Bunyan there, shut 
up with his Bible, until he wrote the "Pil- 
grim's Progress " — and that iron is swimming 
yet! 

There is a prodigious leverage for our faith 
in the glorious doctrine of God's providential 
love. It enables us to remove mountains out 
of our way. It stimulates us to persevering 
effort in the face of every obstacle. A godly 
mother, for example, dedicates her only son to 
the gospel ministry. But how to educate him 
with a widow's scanty purse is a puzzling ques- 
tion. It seems a hard dilemma. But at the 



140 HEAKT-LIFE. 

critical time the will of a deceased relative is 
opened, and a legacy for the widow's son is 
found in tlie will. The lad is sent to college, 
and he lives to-day to preach the unsearcha- 
ble riches of Christ to a vast audience. So 
the widow's God made the iron swim ! 

How well I remember .the difficulties which 
beset my path, when I came over to Brooklyn 
ten years ago, to undertake the building of a 
new church edifice on the sound principle of a 
large house and low pew-rents. We had but 
a feeble band of helpers, and many predicted 
failure. When the building began, Sumter's 
flag fell, and with it fell apparently all hope of 
prosecuting our undertaking to success. But 
we went forward. Poor and godly women 
did their own housew r ork to save a few dollars 
for the church. From unexpected quarters 
came aid — for "the people had a mind to 
work" — and the iron did swim. 

These are not miracles exactly ; but the God 
who floated the prophet's axe at the Jordan 
yet lives, and he still loves to reward faith and 
to answer prayer. There is a rich encourage- 
ment in this truth for all who are earnestly 



MAKING THE IRON SWIM. 141 

laboring for the conversion of souls. An 
unconverted heart is often like to the young 
prophet's axe-head — it is heavy and hard and 
tending downward. But the Spirit of God can 
make the iron move. Know this, ye disheart- 
ened parents, who almost despair of ever see- 
ing your ungodly children come to Jesus. Be 
not weary in your efforts to bring them to the 
Saviour. Make your religion attractive to 
them. Pray for them without ceasing. 

Ye praying wives, whom every communion 
Sabbath separates from your impenitent hus- 
bands, do not give up. God can make the 
iron swim. A loving wife, who spent a whole 
Sabbath lately in most pleading petitions for 
her husband's soul, was joyfully surprised 
on Monday morning to see the man upon his 
knees. 

A long-suffering wife of a sad inebriate has 
just been into my study to tell me that her 
husband came home lately sober and penitent. 
For dark, weary months she has been praying 
for his reform, hoping against hope. It actu- 
ally looks now as if the poor slave of the bot- 
tle would be saved ; but I confess that I never 



142 HEART-LIFE. 

expected to see that stubborn piece of metal 
float. With God all things are possible. 

During a period of revival in a certain town, 
a woman of devoted piety persuaded her skep- 
tical husband to go with her once to church. 
He came home enraged. " I will never go 
again," said he ; "that sermon against infidel- 
ity was aimed at me." She saw that the shots 
were striking him in a sore spot. So she 
prayed the more fervently. 

One evening the wife said kindly to him, 
" I want you, my dear, to grant me one little 
request. Will you go with me to-night to the 
meeting? He answered gruffly, "I will go 
with you to the door." "Very well," she replied 
cheerfully; "that will do." He accompanies 
her to the door ; he stays outside while she 
goes in to pour out her soul to God in impor- 
tunate, believing prayer for that iron heart. 
Presently the door opens. A man walks in, 
and going to her seat sits down beside her. 
He listens quietly. The wife walks home with 
him, all the time talking secretly to God. 

The next evening, after tea, the husband 
rises, and says, " Wife, is n't it about time for 



MAKING THE IRON SWIM. 



143 



us to go to church?" It is too early; but she 
snatches her bonnet and shawl, and hastens 
off with him to the house of God. A happy 
evening is it to her long-tried spirit, for the 
stubborn skeptic bows at the feet of Jesus. 
He comes home to set up a family altar. 
Faith wins its precious victory, and the love of 
Jesus makes the iron siuim! 





The jIoy of jSAvikG the Lost. 




►N Mr. George Kennan's fascina- 
ting "Tent-Life in Siberia" is a 
very thrilling account of a search 
made by the author for a party of his 
lost countrymen on the Anadyr river. 
After a journey by dog-sledge for two hundred 
miles over drifted snow, they reach the spot 
where they conjecture the missing Americans 
to be buried away under the snow. Mr. Ken- 
nan and his companion are well nigh perish- 
ing themselves from a cold which has sunk the 
mercury io fifty degrees below zero ! The feet 
of their poor dogs spot the white snow with 
blood at every step. One of the two brave 
explorers has already sunk exhausted on his 
sledge, and is fast falling into the sleep of 



THE JOY OF SAVING THE LOST. 145 

death. Suddenly, at midnight, Mr. Kennan 
hears a faint, long-drawn halloo across the 
wintry waste. It come from one of his " Chook- 
chee," who has gone on in advance. He hur- 
ries to the spot, all the blood in his veins throb- 
bing at his heart. As he comes up he dis- 
covers the Chookchee standing by a small 
black pipe projecting from a snowbank. The 
lost wanderers must be under it. "' Thank 
God ! thank God !' I repeated to myself softly," 
says the heroic writer ; " and as I climbed upon 
the snowdrift, and shouted down the pipe, 
' Halloo the house!' I heard a startled voice 
under my feet reply, c Who's there?' As I 
entered the snow-cellar, and seized hold of 
my long-lost friends, my overstrained nerves 
gave way, and in ten minutes I could hardly 
raise my hand to my lips." 

Reading the above thrilling scene in my 
friend Kennan's book, I found the tears steal- 
ing down my own cheeks in sympathy with 
the brave fellows who had perilled their lives 
in order to rescue their lost friends from death 
by cold and starvation. After concluding the 
narrative, which had almost the sweet " linea- 

lieait-l.i.V. 10 



146 HEART-LIFE. 

ment of a gospel-book/' I opened my Bible, 
and read this parable which Jesus spake : 

"What man of yon, having a hundred sheep? 
if he lose one of them, doth not leave the 
ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after 
that which is lost until he find it ? And when 
he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders 
rejoicing." 

"With this vivid scene of the Siberian search 
fresh in my mind, I read this exquisite para- 
ble with a new delight. I seemed to see our 
Divine Shepherd starting off after the lost 
sheep. He knows the thickets or the quag- 
mires into which the silly truant must have 
strayed. He may hear its bleatings afar off. 
He goes until he finds it. He does not beat it 
for straggling; but pulling it out of the. mire, 
or drawing it from the tangled thicket, he lay- 
eth it on his shoulders — the clean carrying the 
unclean, the holy carrying the unholy. Beau- 
tiful picture of Jesus, the sin-bearer ! Every 
saved soul has been upon Christ's shoulders. 
"When he "bore our sins" and "carried our 
sorrows," then was the befouled yet precious 
load upon Jesus' shoulder. Yes, and he bids 



THE JOY OF SAVING THE LOST. 147 

us u cast our cares " upon him too. The whole 
load he takes up joyfully. 

Say what we may about free agency, or 
about the activity of the soul in regeneration, 
it is equally true that not a solitary sheep 
would ever have entered the fold of God if the 
Divine Shepherd had not come to seek and to 
save the lost. He came after each one. For 
Jesus "tasted death for every man" — for the 
individual, and not for the vague mass of un- 
distinguishable humanity. That "one sheep" 
was lost was enough to start the loving Shep- 
herd on his search. What an argument is 
this to labor for the conversion of one soul I 

It has often been said as a cavil by students 
of astronomy, If this globe of ours is only a 
mere speck in the starry universe, amid mill- 
ions of suns and planets, why should the Son 
of God single out this diminutive globe as the 
theatre of his incarnation and sufferings? 
why did he stoop to such a little world as 
ours? In reply to this cavil, Dr. Chalmers 
prepared and preached his magnificent "As- 
tronomical Discourses." But we think that 
this exquisite parable throws a hint of sugges- 



148 HEART-LIFE. 

tive light on this problem. For, though we do 
not know that our Saviour never went on an 
errand of redemption to any other planet, we 
do know that he came to this one of ours. We 
do not know that he went to stupendous Jupi- 
ter, or to belted Saturn, or to far-away Nep- 
tune. 

He did not go perhaps to the planet that 
was biggest in size, but to the one that was 
basest in sin. He came not "to the largest 
world, but to the lost world" Ah ! he may 
have left the "ninety and nine" glorious and 
gigantic orbs which never wandered, and 
sought out the single one in which lay a race 
of sinners lost in misery and guilt ! 

There is one stroke in the parable which we 
must not lose sight of. It is that which de- 
picts the exquisite joy of the Rescuer. When 
the shepherd "fiiideth the sheep, he layeth it 
on his shoulders, rejoicing." He is glad for 
the sake of the restored sheep, but still more 
for his own. It was "for the joy set before 
him that he endured the cross and despised 
the shame." Into that sublime joy how many 
elements may enter! There must have been 



THE JOY OF SAVING THE LOST. 149 

in my Saviour's heart a holy ecstacy of love 
which pleased itself in doing good — in saving 
me when lost — in enduring suffering and sac- 
rifice for my salvation. This sublime love of 
the Sin-bearer makes even the crown of thorns 
flash as a diadem of splendors on the Re- 
deemer's bleeding brow. Here was the divine 
luxury of doing good. 

It is a sweet thought too that Jesus would 
have missed me if I had never been sought 
and brought back. As the shepherd in the 
story left the ninety and nine to hunt for the 
single straggler, so I may gladly hope that 
Jesus icanted me in heaven, or else he would 
not have come so far or endured so much to 
save me. If I were left without him, there 
would have been one more soul in hell. But 
if he were left without me, there would be one 
soul the less to sing his praise in heaven. He 
would have had one the less to present before 
his Father "with exceeding joy." 

For observe that the sweet parable says 
nothing about the delight of the sheep in 
being found ; it only depicts the exceeding joy 
of the shepherd in finding the wanderer. He 



150 HEAKT-LXFE. 

calls his neighbors together to share his glad- 
ness. "Likewise there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that re- 
penteth." The common and inaccurate ren- 
dering of this text confines the joy to the an- 
gels only, as if it read "among the angels." 
Just as well say that the "neighbors" felt the 
thrill of gladness oyer the recovered sheep, 
and not the shepherd himself. 

The transcendent joy In heaven over a saved 
soul is not confined to the angel bands. It is 
only witnessed by them, and partially shared 
by them. It is "in their presence" that the 
celestial rapture breaks forth. But the supreme 
joy is in the hosom of the enthroned Redeemer ! 
His w r as the sorrow, when he was " exceeding 
sorrowful even unto death." His is the joy, 
when he presents even one repentant sinner 
"before the presence of his glory." He sees 
the travail of his soul and is satisfied. 

O beloved Saviour ! when we behold thee 
on thy throne, the shepherd amid his ransomed 
flock, thy victories complete, the last wander- 
ing sheep brought home, the last recovered 
jewel glittering in thy crown; then we will 



THE JOY OF SAVING THE LOST. 151 

confess that the triumph was worthy of the 
toil, and the ransom of thy glorified church 
was worthy of all the bitter agonies of Him 
who came to seek and to save the lost ! " "Wor- 
thy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive pow- 
er, and riches, and strength, and honor, and 
glory, and blessing, for ever and ever !" 






Hymns of Heaven, 

FINE hymn is the consum- 
mate flower of doctrine : I had 
rather be the author of "Bock of 
Ages" — that crown-jewel of sacred 
minstrelsy — than of either of Pres- 
ident Edwards' masterly treatises. Charles 
Wesley did more for Christ when he sang 

"Jesus ! lover of my soul I" 

than if he had written fifty volumes of sound 
theology. A mere talk about that exquisite 
hymn a few evenings ago, was blessed to the 
soul of one believer, who had been under a 
cloud of despondency for months. The hymn 
itself would be enough to make "Wesley's and 
Calvin's spirits embrace each other before the 
throne of their Bedeemer, and weep that they 
had ever had a controversy while in the flesh. 



HYMNS OF HEAVEN. 153 

It is natural that the theme of many of the 
richest hymns of the church should be the 
Joys of Heaven. When Bunyan's pilgrim was 
asked in the House Beautiful how he secured 
for himself "golden hours" in which he forgot 
his troubles, he answered: "When I think of 
what I saw at the cross, that will do it ; when 
I look into the roll which I carry in my bosom, 
that will do it; and when my thoughts wax 
ivarm about whither I am going, that will do 
it." The sweet thoughts of his expected home 
in glory drove away the devils of doubt and 
despondency — as they have driven them from 
many a tried Christian spirit ever since. 

The earliest of the hymns of heaven is the 
old Latin composition, "Urbs beata Jerusa- 
lem," which had its roots in the meditations 
of that giant of the fifth century, Augustine 
of Hippo. This is the ground-work of all the 
numerous Jerusalem-hymns of latter ages. In 
the time of Queen Elizabeth, a prisoner was 
shut up in the dreary old tower of London, 
and to him as to the captive in Bedford jail, 
was vouchsafed a bright vision of the "better 
country." He composed a hymn in twenty- 



154 HEAET-LIFE. 

six stanzas, a manuscript copy of which is 
still preserved in the British Museum. It is 
entitled " A Song by F. B. P. to the tune of 
Diana." The first verse is : 

•'Jerusalem, my happy home, 
"When shall I come to thee ? 
When shall my sorrows have an end — • 
Thy joys when shall I see ?" 

The closing verses are in that most raptur- 
ous strain of longing for that celestial paradise, 
where "the trees for evermore bear fruit," and 
where " evermore the angels sit, and evermore 
do sing." The name of this prisoner of Jesus 
Christ is lost in oblivion. A few years after- 
ward, old David Dickson of Scotland, altered 
the first line of the " Song of R B. P." to the 
quaint and tender words, " Oh ! mother dear, 
Jerusalem," and he also added to it six and 
thirty verses of his own. About the begin- 
ning of this century there appeared (from an 
unknown source) a beautiful variation of the 
hymn in six verses. This is the one which is 
found in all our collections of church music 
under the well-known name of "Jerusalem, 
my happy home." 



HYMNS OF HEAVEN. 155 

A Presbyterian clergyman in New Orleans 
once called to visit a young Scotchman who 
was lying very low, and talked to him about 
his soul. The young stranger gave him but 
little attention. During one of his visits the 
minister began to hum over to himself the 
lines "Jerusalem, my happy home, name ever 
dear to me!" The youth burst into tears, 
and exclaimed, "I used to hear my dear 
mother sing those words when I was a child." 
His heart melted under a strain that seemed 
to come back to him as from his cradle ; and 
the heart thus softened, received the "faithful 
saying" with penitence and joy. I am per- 
suaded that we ministers make too little use 
of the Gospel in metre as a means of awaken- 
ing and conversion. A hymn often goes many 
fathoms deeper than a sermon. 

Among the ancient hymns of heaven we 
must not overlook that noble lyric composed 
by old Bernard of Cluny. Its opening verse 

ID, 

"Jerusalem the golden ! 

With milk and honey blest, 
Beneath thy contemplation 
Sink heart and voice oppressed !" 



156 HEAKT-LIFE. 

The "whole hymn reads like one of holy 
Rutherford's "Letters" turned into rhyme. 
It is rich in Scriptural imagery, without de- 
generating into the coarser sensuous language 
which disfigures some of the pious doggerel 
in our Sabbath-school music books. In fact 
some of these descriptions of heaven would 
answer about as well for Mohammed's Para- 
dise. They give children the idea that the 
glorified spirits on high are enjoying a sort 
of celestial picnic with no end of good things 
to eat, and of angels to sing to them under 
the green bowers. 

In my own childhood I got a very different 
conception of the holy habitation of the re- 
deemed, when I heard that glorious hymn of 
Isaac Watts : 

" There is a land of pure delight 
Where saints immortal reign, 
Infinite day excludes the night, 
And pleasures banish pain. " 

As the inspired singer of this lay looked 
across Southampton water to the verdant 
banks of the Isle of Wight, be caught a beau- 
tiful image of death as a "narrow sea" divi- 



HYMNS OF HEAVEN. 157 

ding the heavenly land from ours. He ima- 
gines the lovely island across the water to be 
a type of that land, and writes — 

" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Stand dressed in living green ; 
So to the Jews old Canaan stood 
While Jordan rolled between." 

Of many another hymn of heaven I wish I 
had time and space to write this morning. 
In our days several fine additions have been 
made to this celestial hymnology. Among 
them are "Rest for the Weary," and Dr. 
Muhlenberg's "I would not live alway," and 
those lines of Miss Cary, commencing, 

' ' One sweetly solemn thought 
Comes to me o'er and o'er." 

That popular hymn " Sliming Shore," is wed- 
ded to a noble tune, but the poetry itself is 
rather a clumsy piece of joiner-work. 

For one of the grandest songs of the better 
land we are indebted to a member of that 
many-sided household of genius, the Beechers. 
"When the Eev. Charles Beecher w r as in Swit- 
zerland he caught a sudden inspiration while 
gazing at the glittering peak of Mont Blanc 



158 HEART-LIFE. 

with its coronal of ice. He dashed off a few 
verses, which were set to music by Mr. Zundel, 
and the tune took its name from the moun- 
tain which inspired the hymn. No piece is a 
greater favorite with my own people than this ; 
its first lines are, 

"We are on our journey home- 
Where Christ our Lord is gone." 

Let me quote, in closing, two of the ringing 
stanzas of this heaven-song : 

"Oh ! glory shining far, 

From the never-setting Sun ! • 
Oh, trembling morning star ! 
Our journey's almost done 
To the New Jerusalem. 

" Our hearts are breaking now, 
Those mansions fair to see ; 
O Lord ! tlry heavens bow 
And raise us up with thee 
To the New Jerusalem," 




xr\y~ As*~ 




fc Total Eclipse — and 
itual Lessons, 



its Spir- 




Augusta, Illinois, August 9, 1869. 

NE of the most sublime and 
awe-inspiring sights I ever wit- 
nessed — and yet one of the most 
difficult to describe — was the total 
y-^ eclipse of the sun, as we beheld it 
here on Saturday afternoon. Others will tell 
the story scientifically, let me jot down a few 
impressions of a scene that affected me as it 
did the children that stood beside me. Au- 
gusta — a thrifty village of this abounding re- 
gion — was almost under the centre of the 
total obscuration. "You could not have a 
better place to see it," said the astronomer of 
Princeton College to me a week ago. And 
not to see the eclipse in its totality is about 
equal to being half-married or half-converted. 
At four o'clock we stood in the door-yard 



160 HEART-LIFE. 

of my friend, with smoked glass in hand ; and, 
as one of us was watching the blazing snn, he 
exclaimed, "There she comes !" When a boy, 
I had read of this very eclipse, and of the 
moment it should begin. It did begin at the 
precise second predicted forty years ago ! 
Such is the punctuality of the irath-keeping 
God. And will he not be equally faithful in 
keeping his spiritual promises ? " Wherefore 
dost thou doubt?" The shadow came oyer 
the sun gradually — eyen as I haye seen the 
shadow of a growing sin creep oyer a bright 
Christian character. The landscape around 
us began to look yellowish and ghastly. The 
grass seemed to be getting sick. Oyer the 
trees played a weird, lurid light, and every 
leaf hung perfectly motionless. " Oh ! see how 
queer those flowers look ! And those currant- 
bushes ! It looks as if nature was getting the 
jaundice!" An odd thought; and yet I do 
not know of any other idea that would more 
truly describe Nature's ghastly hue. 

" See who '11 catch the first star," said one 
of our group. The shadow deepened. The 
devouring moon pushed on, until the helpless 



A TOTAL ECLIPSE. 161 

sun was nearly smothered. "There — look! 
look ! See — see — it is almost gone !" Only a 
minute more, and it is total! "Yonder is a 
star!" exclaimed one of our company. It 
was Regulus, blazing away close by the bed 
of the dying sun. (But Venus had been shin- 
ing for full five minutes, without our discover- 
ing her golden locks.) " Only a few seconds 
more!" But, ah! what a transformation do 
those few seconds work ! Even as in a human 
history, the deed of a moment suffices to 
darken a destiny for life; and, still worse, it 
flings its total eclipse over eternity ! 

"Total!" we all exclaimed together. In 
an instant, in the twinkling of an ey6, came 
down an awful shadow, as of a black wing, 
filling the whole heavens. It was ineffably 
frightful. Coleridge's lines flashed into my 
mind in a moment : 

" The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out ! 
With one stride comes the dark /" 

To the north the horizon was dyed with a 
rich orange hue. But above us and around 
us the air seemed to be filled with fine black 
particles. It was so dark that I could not 

Heart-life. 11 



162 HEAET-LIFE. 

recognize a countenance a hundred yards off; 
and yet it was not the darkness of an ordi^ 
nary evening. It was the darkness of death ! 
Above a group of trees before us a flock of 
birds flew wildly to and fro, as if panic- 
stricken. A couple of cows went lowing past 
the gate— the only sound in the awful still- 
ness. Just over the fence, a half-dozen chick- 
ens had composed themselves to roost in a 
cherry-tree. A dozen stars were twinkling in 
various parts of the heavens. The air was 
chill as midnight, 

The best description I can give of the sun 
when in total obscuration is that it looked as 
if a circular shield of sheet-iron had been 
riveted over it; and just at the lower edge 
glittered a bright, rosy clasp or nut, as if it 
was the head of the screw which attached the 
black shield to the sun. All around that 
shield flashed out the white rays of the coro- 
na. This corona had a shimmering, shivering 
brightness, and was fearfully and wonderfully 
beautiful. Its edges were not smooth, but 
scalloped; and from every point small beads 
of light seemed to float off into the sky. 



A TOTAL ECLIPSE. 163 

The mighty pall of darkness hung over us 
for almost three minutes! During that time 
every one in our group had a death-like hue 
So might have looked the face of the universe 
to the apostle John in some of his apocalyptic 
visions. At two minutes after five, as we 
stood gazing at the black orb, with its mag- 
nificent -corona, a sudden flash of golden light 
burst forth from the northern limb. It was 
the most thrilling instant I. ever knew, and 
the most splendid spectacle I ever witnessed. 
As if God said, "Let there be light!" a sheaf 
of dazzling rays burst forth in a twinkling! 
The whole sky lightened instantaneously. 
Methought that the "sons of God" must have 
seen something like this when on Creation's 
morn the first flood of radiance broke on black 
chaos at the Almighty voice. He spake, and 
it was done! "Thou makest darkness, and 
it is night f" " Thou coverest thyself with light 
as with a garment !" 

And so, as we watched the blessed light 
burst forth, and, swift as an archangel, wing 
its bright way through the w r hole heavens and 
over all the earth, it was to us the most per- 



164 HEART-LIFE 

feet of all images of the ineffable Lord Jesus. 
The Christ of Calvary brealdng in on the 
midnight of a world lying in wickedness ! 
Christ's sweet gracious word chasing away 
the darkness of doubt and unbelief from a 
depraved heart! Christ's overpowering love 
turning the night of impenitence into a rosy 
morn of faith and joy ! Christ the comforter 
scattering the gloom which shrouds the cham- 
ber of sorrow! All these visions of our di- 
vine Lord were borne to us on wings of that 
first excelling sunlight. We saw the Sun of 
Righteousness with healing in his beams. We 
saw, as if pictured on the sky, that glorious 
miracle of grace when "old things become 
new" and spiritual death ig turned into spir- 
itual life \ and in that wondrous transformation 
''the Lamb is the Light thereof." Henceforth 
I shall never point a poor sinner to the Sav- 
iour without recalling the delicious thrill of 
last Saturday's sunburst. And so on my 
own failing vision in the dying hour— when 
this world goes under eclipse — may the first 
glimpse of heaven break in ecstasy, and the 
Lamb be the light thereof for ever ! 



C*JP 




fn 



} 



rist the Light to a 



F 



IGHER 




Life. 

HE many writers who have sought 
to set "the gates ajar" have not 
been able to add to our positive 
knowledge of the heavenly state. 
Some have conjectured it to be only 
a glorified condition of happy souls; others 
have pictured it as a place — a stupendous city 
of splendors, filled with everything that de- 
lighteth. Some of these latter writers have 
made it but little in advance of the Mussul- 
man's Paradise. 

But there is one thing we know about heav- 
en. God has revealed it to us. We know 
what is the supreme attraction and the crown- 
ing glory of the celestial world : Christ is the 
Light thereof. "I saw," said the inspired dis- 
ciple John, " that the city had no need of the 
sun, neither of the moon, to lighten it; for 



166 HEART-LIFE, 

the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb 
is the Light thereof." This is the essential 
blessedness of the Christian's everlasting home. 
Christ is enthroned there. Christ reveals him- 
self there. Christ instructs his ransomed ones 
until they "know even as they are known;" 
and oh, how many mysteries he will make 
plain ! Christ will lead his followers to living 
fountains of waters. This will be the con- 
summate glory of that city whose maker and 
builder is God. Christ's presence will be 
heaven's effulgence ; his love our bright ecsta- 
cy; and "we shall be like him, for we shall 
see him as he is." 

If this be so, then the chief characteristic 
of a Christian's life in heaven ought to be the 
characteristic of his life on earth. Heaven is 
"begun below" to a real follower of Jesus. 
The celestial world casts its sweet smell afar 
off to the pilgrim who is approaching its pearly 
gates. And the one grand feature that makes 
a Christian's life on earth resemble his life in 
heaven is "the Lamb is the light thereof." 

Christ is the light thereof in every system 
of spiritual truth, in every triumph of con- 



CHKIST THE LIGHT. 167 

verting grace, in every comfort under trial, in 
every wise reform and work of philanthropy, 
in every closet of devotion, in every consistent 
and godly like. Christ is the Alpha and 
Omega of all true religion. It begins with 
him just as surely as the day begins with the 
rising of the sun. Your new birth, my brother, 
took place at the cross of Jesus. In that hour 
of conversion Christ was the light thereof. 
The new song that was put into your mouth 
was, 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly !" 

What is true of the beginning of your Chris- 
tian life is true ever afterwards. There is not 
an actual grace that is not copied after him, 
not a holy emotion which is not inspired by 
him, not a victory over sin but is won in his 
strength, and you do not take a single step 
toward a higher life unless Christ be "the 
light thereof." 

When you get overburdened with a load of 
anxiety or discouragement, you probably be- 
take yourself to prayer. But the devil mocks 
you and makes sport of you. " How absurd/' 



168 HEART-LIFE. 

jeers Satan, "that your prayer should have 
any effect on God !" Your closet seems to be 
as black as midnight. You are overhung with 
a pall of discouragement. All at once the 
idea strikes you, "I have an advocate in 
heaven ; Jesus Christ ever liveth to intercede 
for me. He has said, Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in my name, he will give it 
you." You grasp hold of the love of the 
Intercessor as a drowning man clutches the 
rope. You seize on his love for you, and on 
his love for those who he upon your hearts. 
Faith sees with new eyes. Your dark closet 
of prayer brightens in a moment. The Lamb 
is the light thereof. You rise from your knees 
strengthened, and go on your way rejoicing. 

One day there arises a perplexing question 
of duty. You know not what to do. Self- 
interest counsels one course. Perhaps friends 
advise the same thing. They tell you "it will 
pay," or it will promote you. You are half 
inclined to decide for it. But conscience whis- 
pers, What will Christ say ? What would he 
have you do ? What will please him ? Then 
your better self, your converted judgment and 



CHRIST THE LIGHT. 169 

affections, spring up and demand of you that 
you take the path which shall most honor 
your Christianity, even though it be up the 
steepest cliffs and through briers that tear 
the garments of your pride. But as you tread 
the rugged furlongs, up the hills and through 
the thickets, you find the blessed Jesus your 
companion on the road, and his smile is "the 
light thereof." 

I do not believe that there is a doubtful 
question in morals or in practice on which 
the life and the teachings of the divine Sav- 
iour do not shed sufficient light. If Christ is 
wholly in your heart, and rules that heart, 
you will decide rightly. Tou will engage in 
the right callings. You will find the right 
fields of labor. You will seek out and enjoy 
the right kinds of recreation. If Christ has 
full possession of a man's soul, he will have 
no lustings after the indecencies of the licen- 
tious stage, or the revelries of the ball-room, 
or the reckless gambling operations of stock- 
boards or "the street," or for any pleasure or 
pursuit into which he cannot take Christ with 
him. 



170 HEAKT-LIFE. 

This glorious presence of Jesus with his 
own can brighten the darkest hours of trial. 
I used to visit an aged blind woman, whose 
sightless eyeballs rolled in vain to find the 
day. She could not see the sweet grandchil- 
dren who read to her God's Word. But hers 
was one of the sunniest rooms in Brooklyn. 
" The Lamb was the light thereof." 

I have gone into a nursery where a mother 
was wringing her hands over the crib in which 
her treasure lay — smitten with the touch that 
turned its cheek to snow. " For this child 1 
prayed" exclaims the agonized mother. "Thy 
prayer is heard,' 7 replies Jesus the Comforter ; 
"this child I will keep for thee. Forbid it not 
to come to me. It was mine before it was 
thine. Folloiu me, and thou shalt find thy 
treasures in heaven." And so the shaft of 
heaven's glory seems to fall on the silent crib, 
and the child is no longer dead, but sleeping ! 

Ah, my fellow-Christian ! you will find, when 
you reach the dark valley yourself, that "in 
the even time, it shall be light." Christ's 
countenance will gild the waters of death with 
glory. It is a "shining shore," because the 



CHEIST THE LIGHT. 171 

Son of God is "the light thereof." And there 
shall be no night there ! Neither shall there 
be any more pain, or sorrow, or crying; for 
the former things have passed away. 

Then "faint not; for the miles to heaven 
are few and short. There are many heads 
lying in Christ's bosom ; but there is room for 
yours among the rest." 






The Cost of Serving Christ. 

LL the most valuable things are 
dearly won. Scientific discoveries 
He at the summit of a hill which 
no man reaches without hard 
climbing. A nation's liberty costs 
treasure, toil, and blood. It is paid in wid- 
ows' tears and consecrated graves. What so 
precious as a soul's redemption ? Yet by one 
price only could it be secured — the " blood of 
the Lamb, without blemish or spot." 

When Christ offered the rewards, and en- 
forced the duty of discipleship, he put in the 
careful injunction to " count the cost." The 
man who would not bear a cross for me, and 
follow me, "is not worthy to be my disciple." 
Let me remind you, my friend, what you must 
reckon upon if you attain that pearl above 
price, a Christian character. Count the cost. 
What is it? 



THE COST OF SERVING CHRIST. 173 

1. Count on a fearful stubbornness in your 
own heart. It is by nature at enmity with 
God. Paul had to give battle without quar- 
ter to the "old man" of sin unto the last. So 
must you. Every sin-insurrection must be 
met with vigilance and prayer. 

2. There are many unwelcome truths in the 
"Word of God for you to swallow. The Bible 
is sent to save you, not to please you. It has 
no mercy on a sinner's sins, but it has un- 
bounded mercy for a sinner's soul. When an 
ungodly man takes the vivid lamp of Bible- 
truths down into the dark vaults of a de- 
praved heart, it makes terrible exposures. 
But the sooner they come the better. Sooner 
find out your sin by that light than by the 
lightning-flash of God's wrath at the judg- 
ment-seat. God will not compromise with 
you. Count the cost of submission. He de- 
mands the whole heart ; but he offers in re- 
turn a whole heaven. 

3. If you expect to follow Christ, you must 
deny your selfishness, and take up every cross 
that Christ appoints. Count the cost! The 
simple, inexorable rule is : Give up nothing 



174 HEART- LIFE. 

that is innocent and right ; but give up every* 
thing that is ivrong. You now love to have 
your own way. You must consent gladly to 
let God have his way. You have favorite 
pleasures that are sinful. Find a higher 
pleasure in abandoning them. Count the cost 
of loving God more than you love money. 
Count the cost of offending some of your 
friends. Christ is a better Friend than they. 
Count the cost of quitting "profitable" sins. 
Count the cost of some sneers, of a great 
many hard knocks, and still more hard work. 
Count the cost of a noble, prayerful, unselfish, 
godly life. It will cost dearly, but, thank God, 
it jjays ! 

When you get to be a Christian you will 
find that the clearer and stronger you are, the 
happier will be your conscience. But the 
better you are, the more dearly you will pay 
for it. Study in your Bible what it cost Paul 
to become all he was. Does he begrudge now 
one single self-mortification, one crushing of 
his selfish lusts, one stripe of persecution's 
lash? Not he ! He gloried in every tribula- 
tion that burnished his piety, and brought 



THE COST OF SEKVING CHKIST. 175 

honor to his Redeemer's name. The best 
part of a Christian's character is that which 
costs the heaviest price. Patience, for exam- 
ple, is a beautiful trait ; but it is not oftenest 
worn by those who walk life's sunny side in 
silver slippers. It is the product of dark 
nights of adversity and of many a cross-bear- 
ing up the mount of suffering. The "trial of 
your faith worketh patience." The bruised 
flower emits most fragrance ; and a bruised 
Christian puts forth the sweetest odors of hu- 
mility and heavenly-mindedness. 

4. Let me offer you four brief encourage- 
ments. I drop them as diamonds in your 
pathway to the Cross. Here they are : 

Firstly. The service of Christ pays a mag- 
nificent percentage of usefulness. A working 
Christian never can be wretched. He gathers 
his sheaves as he goes. 

Secondly. A man is always happy when he 
is right. He is happy in doing right, happy 
in feeling that he has done right, and happy 
in the approval of his Master's heavenly 
smile. Impenitent friend! you have never 
felt this ! 



176 HEART-LIFE. 

Thirdly. God will sustain you, if you try 
to serve him. His grace is sufficient for you. 

Finally. There is a heaven at the end of 
every faithful Christian's journey. 

" Our knowledge of that life is small ; 
The eye of faith is dim ; 
But 't is enough that Christ is there, 

And we shall be like him. " 

My friend, are you ready to follow Jesus ? 
Count the cost. But I warn you tenderly 
that, if it costs much to be a Christian, it will 
will cost infinitely more to live and die a sin- 
ner ! Religion costs self-denial ; sin costs self- 
destruction ! 

To be a temperate man costs self-restraint. 
To be a tippler costs a ruined purse, a ruined 
character, a ruined soul. The sensualist pays 
for going to perdition by living in a sty. The 
swearer must pay for his oaths, and the Sab- 
bath-breaker for his guilty contempt of God's 
law. 

To lead a life of impenitence costs a dying 
bed of remorse. Count the cost. To go up 
to the judgment-seat without Christ* will cost 
you an eternity of despair. Count the cost. 



THE COST OF SERVING CHRIST. 177 

Sit down and make the honest reckoning. 
Put into one scale, life ; into the other, death. 
Put into one scale, heaven; into the other, 
hell ! Weigh them well ! Weigh for eternity ! 
And, while you sit weighing anxiously, Christ 
whispers into your ear the thrilling question : 
"What shall it profit a man if he shall gain 
the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or 
what shall a man give in exchange for his 

SOUL?" 




Hoart-Llfet 



12 





Full ^ssurance. 

AITH is the milk, and assu- 
rance is the cream that rises 
on it. If you haye milk, you are 
pretty certain to haye cream, un- 
less the milk be the watery Lon- 
don mixture. 5 ' So said Mr. Spurgebn in one 
of his racy discourses ; and it is not often 
that a sanctified wit teaches as much sound 
theology. 

There are two kinds or shades of assu- 
rance — one of faith, and one which the apostle 
calls the "full assurance of hope/' Faith is 
the soul's trusting itself to Jesus Christ. Not 
an intellectual act merely, but a spiritual ex- 
ercise of confiding trust. But assurance is the 
full confidence of a belieyer in his own safety ; 
that, being united to Christ, he is delivered 
from the "law of sin and death," and is for 



FULL ASSURANCE. 179 

ever safe. John Wesley obtained this state 
of peaceful confidence when, after reading 
Luther's exposition of a part of the book of 
"Romans," and while he was walking in Al- 
dergate street, he felt his heart strangely 
warmed within him. He says that assurance 
was given him that Jesus had taken away his 
sins and saved him from the law of sin and 
death. The Holy Spirit bore witness with his 
spirit that he was a child of God. 

Many shallow and absurd views are often 
held in regard to the " witness of the Spirit." 
Some imaginative people declare that this 
"witness" has come to them in a vision, or by 
a voice from heaven, or in some extraordinary 
and sudden manner. But this is not the 
usual or normal experience of most sensible 
Christians. They obtain the witness of the 
Spirit by comparing the Holy Spirit's descrip- 
tion of the true Christian in God's "Word with 
their own character and experience. God's 
Word tells them w r hat it is to be a follower of 
Christ, and sets forth the necessary traits and 
characteristics of the new life in Jesus. They 
compare themselves with the Divine Word; 



180 HEART-LIFE. 

and, if they find that the Holy Spirit's de- 
scription of the true Christian corresponds 
with the Holy Spirit's work on their own 
hearts and lives, they know at once that they 
have their "witness" within themselves. 

Each work of the Spirit testifies to the other. 
If we take a gold eagle to the mint, and com- 
pare it with the die, we see that they exactly 
correspond. The same stars and head of Lib- 
erty and inscriptions are on the die and on 
the coin. So a child of God opens his inspired 
Bible and reads : " He that believeth on the 
Lord Jesus shall be saved." He says to him- 
self : " I know that I do^ give up all other reli- 
ance, and trust Jesus only." He reads in his 
Bible: "My peace I give unto you." Look- 
ing into his own heart, he finds that peace. 
Again, he reads that if any man will be 
Christ's disciple, he must take up his cross 
and follow him. Snch crosses he knows that 
he has taken up more than once. " To them 
that believe Christ is precious." The believer 
by actual experience so finds Jesus, and is as 
certainly conscious that he loves his Saviour 
as he is that he loves his own mother or the 



FULL ASSUKANCE. 181 

child that plays by his side. Thus the Chris- 
tian goes on, and compares his own state with 
the required condition of discipleship in God's 
"Word ; and, if he finds a good degree of re- 
semblance, then he has an assurance that he 
is Christ's. There is an agreement between 
w^hat the Holy Spirit has written on the Bible 
page and what that same Holy Spirit has 
written on his heart. And thus the Spirit 
beareth witness to his spirit that he is a child 
of God. This is one meaning, and a most 
vitally important meaning of that oft-quoted 
phrase: "The witness of the Spirit." 

If the gold coin does not correspond with 
the die in the United States mint, we at once 
pronounce it a counterfeit. So the man who 
finds no clear resemblance in his own heart 
and conduct to the standard of Christianity in 
God's Word must confess that he is none of 
Christ's. His public profession is a counter- 
feit. Cream does not rise on water. Without 
the life of faith there can be no genuine " as- 
surance of hope." Men never gather grapes 
from thistles. 

A healthy Christian ought to have a com- 



182 HEART-LIFE. 

fortable assurance. He has a right to look 
for it. Good milk ought to raise cream. The 
reason why some truly good people do not 
enjoy more clear and comforting assurance is 
that they perpetually nurse their doubts and 
starve their faith. They never make a strong 
grasp of the divine promises. They are 
chronic doubters. "Other people may be 
saved, but not J." If the life-boat rocks in the 
storm, they constantly "cry out for fear," and 
declare that they are going to the bottom. If 
such desponding doubters will not exercise 
faith, they must blame no one but themselves. 
God will not build another boat, or order per- 
petual calm weather just to suit their timo- 
rous unbelief. 

Other people are the prey of their bodily 
feelings. To-day they feel well, their business 
prospers, and they are jubilant on the moun- 
tain-top. To-morrow their digestion is bad, 
their nerves are shaky, bad news comes, and 
at once their spiritual barometer falls again. 
They are all "in the dumps." Call upon 
them to pray, and their prayer is like a cap- 
tive's groan in his dungeon. Nervous Chris- 



FULL ASSURANCE. 183 

tians and dyspeptic Christians need a three- 
fold supply of grace. It is as much their duty 
to pray against and fight against these peri- 
odic ague-fits of despondency as it is the duty 
of a man with strong sensual passions to bat- 
tle against his lusts for liquor or libidinous- 
ness. An increase of faith, a victory over 
"fleshly" influences and external distractions, 
vail bring abiding peace. These come from 
prayer and godly living. These come from a 
closer union to Christ. As farmers bury their 
winter apples so deep in the ground that they 
are beneath the frosts of January, so a Chris- 
tian ought to put his faith and his love of 
Jesus so deep in his heart that they shall not 
be frozen by every external influence of bod- 
ily distemper or adversities of condition. Per- 
fect love keeps out fear. 

Finally, let us remind our brethren in 
Christ that full assurance is both a right and 
a duty. It is a perpetual joy ; for, if our Lord 
has given us a title to heaven, why should not 
we enjoy it? "Why should a Chiistian go 
limping and whining along the upward road 
to bis Father's home in glory? Paul had a 



184 HEART-LIFE. 

mighty assurance, founded on a mighty faith. 
He kneiv whom he had believed. He exhorts 
his brethren to use " diligence to the full assu- 
rance of hope." The Greek word *xhipo$opia 
means a full lading. If applied to a tree, it 
signifies an abundant crop of fruit, that 
weighs doWn the branches. If applied to a 
vessel, it signifies a ship crammed with her 
cargo. But the tree must be in good soil, and 
be well cultivated. So a follower of Christ 
must be rooted in Christ, and abide in Christ, 
and be watered by the Spirit, and grow in 
grace, if he would attain to the Trtypofopla, the 
full assurance of hope unto the end. "We 
must receive Christ ; for "to as many as re- 
ceived Him to them gave he power to become 
the sons of God." As we have seen a ship 
lie along-side of a grain elevator until the 
golden grain filled the hold, so must a be- 
liever keep his soul close beside the infinite 
Jesus, that he may be filled from the Divine 
fullness until he attains the "full assurance 
of hope unto the end ! " 





Hymns of the Heart. 

the richest and sweetest of all 
modern hymns of the heart we 
have paid our tribute of affection. 
The name of its author — Charles 
Wesley — should be exceeding dear 
to every lover of Jesus. To him belongs the 
glory of having written not only more hymns 
than any other man, but also of composing 
one sacred song which takes rank next to the 
" Dies Irse " and the "Bock of Ages." 

Since his day several new and beautiful 
contributions have been made to that class of 
hymns, which may be called Songs of the Soul. 
Like many of David's most precious psalms, 
they are the musical outflow of a deep inward 
experience. Let us now bind a fresh chaplet 
around the modest brow of the authoress of 
one of these heart-songs. 



186 HEART-LIFE. 

Her name appears in most of the lately- 
published collections, yet few know anything 
about her. She was born at Cambridge, Eng- 
land, in February, 1805. Her father, Mr. 
Benjamin Flower, was the editor of a weekly 
paper. Her mother was a woman of fine gifts 
and culture. Their youngest daughter, Sarah 
F. Flower, was worthy of her name. For 
"Sarah " signifies a princess, and sweeter fra- 
grance has rarely exhaled from smjjloiver in 
the garden of the Lord. 

This gifted girl married Mr. William B. 
Adams, an English civil engineer of superior 
abilities. She was of frail constitution, and, 
amid many bodily sufferings, she kept her pen 
at work upon various poetical productions. 
One of these was a religious drama. Another 
was a volume for children, entitled, "The 
Flock at the Fountain." At what time she 
caught the inspiration to compose that one 
immortal hymn which is now sung around the 
globe, we have never learned. Probably it 
was some season of peculiar trial, when the 
bruised spirit emitted the odors of a child-like 
submission to a chastening Father. It must 



HYMNS OF THE HEART. 187 

have oozed from a bleeding heart. As in the 
case of Toplady and Charlotte Elliott and 
Bay Palmer, the singer little dreamed that 
her song would be heard through the ages. 

Her hymn first appeared in a volume of sa- 
cred lyrics, published by a Mr. Fox,' in Eng- 
land, about the year 1841. The authoress did 
not lire to catch the echoes of the fame it 
was to bring, for she died in 1849, at the age 
of forty-four. She was buried near Harlow, 
in Essex, and for several years her name was 
known to but few beyond the circle of loving 
friends who read it on her monument. 

Presently the hymn began to work its way 
into various collections of songs for worship. 
It crossed to America. It was heard with de- 
light in our prayer-meetings. It was married 
to the noble tune of "Bethany," and every- 
body caught the glorious strain. In noon- 
day gatherings for prayer it soon became so 
familiar that if any one "struck up" the 
hymn the whole audience joined in and sang 
it from memory. Last year, Professors Smith, 
Hitchcock, and Park, as they wound their way 
down the foot-hills of Mount Lebanon, came 



188 HEART-LIFE. 

in sight of a group of fifty Syrian students, 
standing in a line, singing in full chorus. 
They were the students of the new " College 
of Beirut," at Abieh, and they were singing in 
Arabic to the air of "Bethany." As the Pro- 
fessors drew nearer, they caught the sublime 
words : 

' ' Nearer, my God, to Thee ! 
Nearer to Thee ; 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me, 
Still all my song shall be, 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
Nearer to Thee." 

"I am not much given to the weeping 
mood," said Prof. Hitchcock, when describing 
the thrilling scene, " but when we rode through 
the ranks of those Syrian youths, I confess 
that my eyes were a little damp," If it be 
permitted to the departed people of God to 
witness the transactions of earth, we may im- 
agine with what rapture the glorified spirit of 
Sarah Flower Adams overheard her heart- 
song thus chanted in the land of sacred story. 

As a literary production, the hymn is not 
faultless. Nor is it quite faultless in its adap- 



HYMNS OF THE HEART. 189 

tation to Christian worship, for the name of 
Jesus is not in any of its rich stanzas. But 
as a poetical version of Jacob's dream at 
Bethel, and as the devout aspiration of a soul 
chanting to God its triumphant song in the 
night, these lines have no peer in our modern 
hymnology. The authoress did not need to 
write another syllable than this one hymn of 
the wounded heart. This alone will carry the 
name of Sarah Adams into the minstrelsy of 
the millennium. 

Has her hymn any equal of its kind in our 
time? Perhaps not; but two others stand 
very close to it. One of them is the Bev. 
Hugh StoweU's " Mercy-seat," beginning with 
the words : 

" From every stormy wind that blows." 

The other is the production of Bev. Henry 
F. Lyte, a native of Kelso, Scotland, after- 
wards the home of that grand singer of holy 
songs, Horatius Bonar. Mr. Lyte entered the 
English Episcopal Church, and became the 
rector of Brixham, in Southern England, that 
poetic belt sacred to the lyres of Watts, Steele, 
Toplady, and Wesley. There he wrote that 



190 HEART-LIFE. 

hymn (so often attributed to a "Miss Grant") 
commencing : 

"Jesus, I my cross have taken." 

His health failed, and, in 1847 he was 
obliged to sail for Nice, where he soon fell 
asleep in Jesus. The last Sabbath that he 
spent with his flock was. the day of com- 
munion. Towards evening he handed to a 
friend a manuscript containing eight exquisite 
verses. They proved to be his own death- 
song of holy faith. Life's brief day was ebb- 
ing swiftly to its close. The lay he sang is 
the most pathetic in our modern hymnology. 
Let any reader open to it, and his eyes will 
fill with tears as he reads : 

"Abide with me ! Fast falls the eventide ; 
The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide ; 
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me ! 

" Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; 
Earth's joys grow dim — its glories pass away; 
Change and decay in all around I see ; 
O Thou who changest not, abide with me ! 

"Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word, 
But as Thou dwell'st with Thy disciples, Lord — 
Familiar, condescending, patient, free ; 
Come, not to sojourn, but abide with me ! 



HYMNS OF THE HEAET. 191 

" Come, not in terrors, as the King of kings, 
But kind, and good, with healing in Thy wings, 
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea ; 
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus 'bide with me. 

"I need Thy presence every passing hour ; 
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power ! 
Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be ? 
Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me ! 

" I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless; 
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness; 
Where is death's sting ? Where, grave, thy victory ? 
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me ! 

1 ' Hold Thou thy cross before my closing eyes ; 
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows 

flee; 
In life and death, Lord, abide with me ! " 

But we must draw these reveries with the 
hymn-writers, and these counsels for the 
heart-life, to a close. As a labor of love have 
we written. We trust that the labor has not 
been in vain in the Lord. "We close with 
those glorious lines of good old Bishop Ken, 
which have been sung pftener than any other 
four lines in the English language : 

"Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow; 
Praise Him, all creatures here below ; 
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; 
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" 



ivtlisani ▼©!* 



)% 



Jay's Morning Exercises for the Closet. For every 
day in the year. Steel Portrait. Clear, pointed, and for- 
cible, abounding with appropriate and beautiful Scripture 
illustrations. 653 pages, 8vo. 

Jay's Evening Exercises. The counterpart of the 
above. 771 pages, 8vo. 

Burder's Fifty- two Tillage Sermons. In one octavo 
volume, large type, comprising a sermon for each Sabbath 
of the year. A favorite in churches and families on both 
sides of the Atlantic. 571 pages. 

Mason's Spiritual Treasury. A meditation upon texts 
of Scripture for each day in the year, adapted to great 
usefulness in the family and the closet. 528 pp. 12mo. 

Bishop Hall's Contemplations on Scripture History. 

Illustrating the historical parts of the Bible in an original, 
sprightly, and forcible style, interesting to the reader of 
every age. 516 pages, 12mo. 

Gurney on Love to God. 242 pages, 18mo. 

Kevins' Practical Thoughts. Opening, from the 
depths of his own Christian experience, rich fountains of 
blessing for others. Steel Frontispiece. 234 pp. 18mo. 

Bogatzky's Golden Treasury. "For the children of 
God whose treasure is in heaven." A portion for each 
day in the year. 510 pages, 32mo. 

Clark's Scripture Promises. The promises of the 
Bible systematically arranged. 348 pages, 32mo. 

Daily Scripture Expositor. Beautiful illustrations 
of a Bible passage for every day in the year. 286 pages, 
32mo. 

PUBLISHED BY THE 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologie: 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPHfc s^ESERVATIO 
111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



